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Design Category
Book design, 2000
Creative director/designer
David Zachary Cohen
Collection
(2001) 50 Books/50 Covers of 2000
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The challenge of this project was to key the audience into the musical aspect of this collection of short stories. The guitar is such a familiar icon that you can use the smallest section of it and it would still be recognizable. Once potential readers made the connection between the guitar and the author—Ray Davies of The Kinks—they might be persuaded to read more. I wanted the jacket to have a literary feel, since the stories are actually a more fleshed-out version of the already strong narrative of the original songs. Visually, I wanted to suggest a landscape using the curves of the guitar, the type disappearing into the horizon. I wanted to keep the metaphor subtle, and immediately thought of Marc Yankus, who took my simple concept and embellished it beautifully with his unique sensibility of textures and colors.