The Brief
Create jacket artwork for the Beat generation classic, On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The publishers, Viking Press, have decided to re-release this title in hardback form, and want a new jacket design to reflect the beatnik and avant-garde nature of this classic novel.
My response to the book itself was very mixed. I did a detailed concept map (see first page of the Sketchbook) to try and capture and work through my very mixed responses. I really like the energy – and being ‘On the Road’ is something in my own soul. A passage that is often quoted is:
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
But I found the implicit and often explicit sexism not only of Dean, but also Kerouac himself, really got under my skin – so close to the sexism and prejudice that was all around me growing up.
Cover 1 Black City
Black City was my first new idea, developed from my original dark text image and road cover ideas, trying to achieve a similar feel of darkness and fractured movement – maybe ‘big brother watching’. The treatment is expressive, trying to attract the reader with a bold contrasty image and distinctive style.
The text on which it is based is : “The whole mad swirl of everything that was to come began then; it would mix up all my friends and all I had left of my family in a big dust cloud over the America night”
Cover 2 Pulp Fiction
This cover was a second parallel idea – developed from one of the few passages in the book that could speak to a modern more feminist audience. It is more of a narrative treatment that suggests a story through juxtaposition starting with the text:
“Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk.
Not courting talk – real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”
Cover 3 Wings
This came from a completely new sketch in oil pastel and graphite of some text near the end of the book where Dean’s energy has nearly sent him mad.
“I saw his huge face over the plains with the mad, bony purpose and the gleaming eyes; I saw his wings. I saw his old jalopy chariot with thousands of sparking flames shooting out the front. I saw the path it burned over the road…Dean had gone mad again”
This is another bold, contrasty expressive approach, aiming to attract the reader by a distinctive image style. I was playing around with bold shapes and lines across the page on this one, enjoying the oil pastel. I liked the coloured and textured effect I got – particularly when it was enhanced with a generous dose of fixative. Also the scratched out name.
