ghostofamerica book design

The Bucket

Opening spread for 'The Bucket' with a hand-lettered story title set over a loose pen-and-ink sketch of a roadside stand, the body text beginning in a single column on the facing page
The cover art is another mixed media collage. The black shapes that look like continents or islands on a map are actually charred remains of another page from another book. I like to light things on fire sometimes in pursuit of art. I don't use stock images unless they are manipulated in a way that makes them new. for instance, there is a stock photo of a city with skyscrapers in the center. I printed it in black and white and used the paper it was printed on as a ground for the collage. So it's a photo of a photo. There is real space inside the image.
Spread with a loose pencil sketch of a forest cabin in the margin beside a column of running text set in a warm serif
This is a collection of short stories. Each story is paired with a piece of original art. It is, like Slingshot, a complex layout.
Spread of running text set in a warm serif with a wide left margin reserved for marginal sketches and notations
I chose a script for an accent typeface because of the mild dissonance that comes from using a handmade look in a book of speculative fiction. This brings out the human focus of stories that otherwise might feel unreachable or abstract.
Spread with a hand-drawn diagram of the bucket attraction's mechanism, labeled in a small hand-lettered caption face
My breaks are clean, unadorned. This is a book with a lot of elements, and unlike Slingshot, more visual elements in the breaks just felt cluttered.
Spread of running text drawing toward the story's end, set in the same warm serif with a faint sign-paint red used for a single line of dialogue
Closing spread for 'The Bucket' with the final lines of text set above a small closing illustration of the attraction at dusk