The Making Of Us | Book Cover Design

Rachel approached us to create the front cover for her beautiful poetry book. Rachel works as a secondary school English teacher and had spent the past year creating a poem that captured each of her students, either purely capturing them as they were as a person, capturing a specific moment she witnessed or a profound moment they had between the two of them. The poems were stunning and quite moving at times, it was an absolute pleasure to create the cover design and inside chapter illustrations for the book.

Rachel loved the simplicity of Simon Armitage’s ‘Kid’ and Philip Larkin’s ‘High Windows’, and wanted something simple and striking in that fashion. I began by of course, reading the book and jotting ideas that I felt captured the essence of book. I experimented with a mix of photography and simplistic illustration and cut out paper design.

The idea that Rachel loved the most, was the simple apple on the table. A classic and timeless symbol of a relationship and transaction between student to teacher. I accompanied the design with a detailed root system which created a textured pattern in the background. I wanted to show and symbolise, not only the growth and development of the students, but the growth of Rachel too and the progression of their relationships throughout their time together.

I created simple charcoal illustrations for the chapter sections and finished the book with an apple tree on the final pages. The tree holds an apple for every student mentioned in the book.