The project was a series of three matching book covers. I decided to approach Douglas Adams's detective series, Dirk Gently. He died while writing the third installment, so while there are technically only two books (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul), I used his posthumous collection of essays, articles, and the incomplete draft of Dirk Gently #3 (The Salmon of Doubt) as my final cover.

I love the series' unique tone: a blend of dark mystery and absurdist humor. It was important that the designs reflected that.

The project began by coming up with ten different concepts for the matching set.

While I loved the idea of making pulp cover pastiches (a la Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys), I knew my time constraints wouldn't allow me to realize concept #2 as it deserved. Ultimately, I went with concept #4 because the set felt the most cohesive and fleshed out.

The process leaped off the page when I was determining the best way to execute it. While I wanted to do something that felt attractive and clean to modern sensibilities, I also wanted to give the covers some frays and edges. I felt the best way to accomplish this was to go 'old school:' cut paper, and hand lettering.

From then on, I adjusted everything (colors, shapes and text) in Photoshop. Each element found itself on a new layer, with cleaned up edges, and more vibrant colors.

The project was completed with InDesign, where the cover art, text, and spine all came together into one finished piece.

Mockups: Covervault [Series] [Single]

Fonts: Alte Haas Grotesk, Volaroid Script, Heavy Equipment & Sans Thirteen Black.