I had the privilege of working as a design intern at Carnegie Mellon University Press for two years. While there, I designed interiors and cover mechs for around a dozen titles.
Most of the books CMU Press publishes are poetry, which presents a unique cover design challenge. How can you reflect the overall feeling of all of the poems collected together?
With some books, the author already had an image in mind for me to work with—like Fleeing Actium, in which most of the poems are inspired by art pieces. The author requested we use one of those art pieces as the cover. For Requiem, which is a collection of poems about grief, the author sent us a lovely photo of her late mother.
On other books, I was given free rein to go in any direction I pleased. I experimented with lettering, textures, shapes, and images. It was a really fun process!
I also designed interior layouts for a few of the books. I love getting to exercise a different set of my design muscles on projects like this!
While the process for every cover is different, the Museum cover was incredibly fun. The cover artwork lent itself so well to lots of typographic experimentation!
© 2024 Ellis Carson Jones
Website set in Cosmodoxia Variable from Prologue Type.
