Cover design and typesetting for this curated collection of Mike Royko’s best writings for the Chicago Tribune.
I knew I wanted to use a neon on this jacket from the beginning, and built my design around it. Royko’s voice is irreverent, sharp, and totally singular, and it was important to me for that to be reflected in the cover. I did a spot gloss over all of the yellow on the cover and left the rest a soft matte for maximum POP.
A few rejected designs… I couldn’t get the team on board with this neon green, but it lives fondly in my memory.
Even though the collection was edited down to a fraction of its original 2.2 million words (!), the word count was still one of the highest I’ve worked with. I chose a lightweight high-bulk paper for the interior — each sheet has the same thickness as a normal book paper, but weighs a lot less, which was important for keeping the book from turning into an actual brick.
