Deep Vellum Book Cover Design

Client: Deep Vellum Books

Graphic Design | Software: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop

This project, supported by local non-profit publishing house Deep Vellum, provided an opportunity to refine my graphic design skills by designing speculative book covers. The design process included audience refinement, topical research, and final conceptual designs.

Client Background

The City that Killed the President: A Cultural History of Dallas and the Assassination

By Tim Cloward

Deep Vellum is a nonprofit publishing house and literary arts organization with the mission to bring the world into conversation through literature. Founded in 2013, Deep Vellum is dedicated to publishing socially engaged literature that fosters cross-cultural dialogue, breaks down barriers between communities, and promotes empathy. Deep Vellum focuses on publishing all types of works including fiction, poetry, nonfiction, photography, and translated literature. Additionally, they have a special focus on works from Dallas writers.

Book Research

I was asked to design a book cover for The City that Killed the President: A Cultural History of Dallas and the Assassintation, written by local author and writer Tim Cloward. Deep Vellum shared a prologue of the book, but I had little other reference material or the ability to speak directly with the author. As I brainstormed different concepts, my research was framed on the publisher’s notes and marketing ideas and general research I performed on the book topic.

In my client briefing, Deep Vellum shared a few notes that would drive my design concepts:

  • Why are people so obsessed with this historical event specifically?

  • This book has a provocative title - the cover should add to the outrageousness of the title

  • This book will become part of the ephemera of the Kennedy assassination

  • Keywords: conspiracy theory, Kennedy, assassination

01 Publisher Notes

While I was familiar with the Kennedy assassination as a historical event, I needed to research the cultural identity of the time from a visual perspective. Specifically, I reviewed items that referenced both the assassination and the city of Dallas such as magazines, pop culture pieces, and campaign posters. I began to brainstorm some specific themes that would ultimately inform my final design concepts for the book cover:

  • Loud, collage, propaganda

  • Use of evidentiary photos, documents, locations

  • Capture the sense of an event not talked about or ignored

  • Dallas defined by glitz, glamour, Dallas Cowboys, Dallas television series

02 Research Themes

Final Design Concepts