The Daily Fashion Paper Back is a collection of stories exhibited through illustration and written word. I knew the cover needed to reflect the quality of the stories. One of the goals with the Paper-Back was to have each and every aspect of production illustrated. That is true for the featured members of the community, to the sponsored ads to the cover of the book.

At the bottom of this post you will see the original cover design which I still hold dear to my heart. With a blue cover marked only by a the title and a simple water-mark it held the tenants of simplicity that I love in design. Unfortunately it did not express what the book is about.

Suddenly I had the book compiled and edited and the cover was all wrong.

The faceless man on the cover is meant to be a place-holder for the individual. This first Daily Fashion Paper-Back looks to tackle some of the ideas of what a community is. As a collection of the stories of individuals one can look at the whole and get a sense of a greater story, of a collective story of the community.

The cover is split in half by a blue water-mark and a black water-mark to represent the dual story telling of the illustrated image and the written word. Emerging in the center is the individual- the result of the story.

Discovering what the cover needed to be was a bit of a journey and I hoped to share a bit of that below. Some sketchbook pages exhibit the thought process in the design, followed by the steps in completing the illustrative process- from sketch to finished painting.