Book Design

What happened is Happening: poems

Art direction, cover art & design, interior layout, writer

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I composed over 400 blackout poems and compiled a collection of them to create the book What Happened is Happening: Poems (Book & Mortar Press, 2022). I built this project myself from conception to completion—designing the cover, interior, promotional bookmarks and magnets, social media and website graphics, and author photograph. To publish this and other upcoming titles in a niche market, my partner and I founded Book & Mortar Press. In this process, I gained experience working with Ingram Spark, Amazon KDP, and local printers to bring this book to readers.

Follow up: A forthcoming trilogy

Postcards from Babylon - book

Cover art & design

Best-selling author, Brian Zahnd, hired me to design the cover for his book, Postcards from Babylon: The Church in American Exile (Spello Press, 2019) which debuted at #1 in Theology on Amazon. I combined hand-lettering, stock imagery, paper textures, and strong typography to create a cover that achieved the author’s vision for this project. In addition to the print edition, I supplied the Kindle and audio versions, as well as a suite of backgrounds for use in social media and presentation slides.

Unused design concepts:

The Unvarnished jesus - book

Cover art & design

I also designed the cover of Brian Zahnd’s book, The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey (Spello Press, 2019). Here is a gallery of the design concepts I submitted for that project:

Jesus Revealed - paintings & book

Multimedia art credit

I recently completed a series of paintings and accompanying multimedia art that was commissioned by Abingdon Press in conjunction with Matt Rawle’s forthcoming book, Jesus Revealed: The I Am Statements in John’s Gospel (Abingdon Press, 2022). The designer used my paintings on the cover, inside every interior chapter, and in supplementary DVD/streaming/worship resources.

More information about this painting series, REFRACTIONS, is available on my blog.

the Conscious Enneagram - Brand & Book

Branding & cover art credit

I worked with Abi Robins to create the branding for their Conscious Enneagram business. This branding guide was then employed by Broadleaf Books’ team when designing The Conscious Enneagram: From Typology to Transformation (2021) in which I have a cover art credit.