Inspired by the author’s stargazing trips along the sandy beaches of Lake Superior, a shooting star explodes, sparking an idea for a legacy story about friends trapped in a magical land and a mysterious journey with many unusual companions.
During our design meeting, we spoke of classical vintage books, the Wizard of Oz and Hans Christian Anderson, and a small sketch that Becky created inspired by that moment along the lake.
Creating the Magic
Cover Development
Land of the Chrysalis arrived as a project already in motion. Author Becky Schober had already requested a cover from Lily Nelson, a coworker with a talent for illustration. When Lily’s progress stalled, I asked Becky if I could step in.
This is not at all atypical for author-originated projects where the cart sometimes ends up in front of the horse; it certainly is not a problem for a flexible designer. I opened with a full design briefing, which surfaced multiple ideas pulling in different directions: vintage, cloth-bound charm with Hans Christian Andersen–style lettering, and the pragmatic need for a modern, full-bleed cover rather than a cloth-wrapped, foil-stamped one. My job from there was to reconcile both.
Lily eventually delivered a finished cover. The art was lovely, but a drab background, symmetric layout, and conventional type held it back.
I separated her illustration from its background, set her type aside, and built nearly a dozen new concepts—pushing the art well past Becky’s first sketch and Lily’s draft, while staying true to what the briefing had revealed.
The final result wraps Lily’s art in a deep, starry night sky, lets her original colors glow like blacklight against the dark, and pairs it with hand-styled type that casts its own light. It’s a cover neither Becky nor Lily pictured at the outset—built by listening carefully, then carrying multiple ideas somewhere only design could take them.
Frontispiece and Interior
As is typical of my designs, the interior of Land of the Chrysalis stylistically follows from the cover aesthetic—repurposing the title font for chapter titles, and bringing some of the stylized stars into the chapter and blank pages.
Even in the end, I didn’t want to give up on the author’s original sketch—the inspiration for the cover work—even if it didn’t make it into the final cover.
With a little help from a sketching tool, I was able to transform the simple pencil sketch into a vintage-style frontispiece which accompanies the title page for a lovely storybook opening.
