David Drummond on Designing Rushes from the River Disappointment
David Drummond is founder and principal of Salamander Hill Design, based in Elgin, Québec, Canada. Founded in 2002, the studio produces projects that include posters, book covers, promotional materials, magazine illustration, packaging and identity development. Here he gives us a behind-the-scenes look at his process for designing poetry book Rushes from the River Disappointment.
This is a poetry cover design for McGill-Queen’s University Press, as part of their Hugh Maclennan Poetry Series. There was a line in the brief for this project that was the initial impetus for the first series of sketches: “The collection frequently uses nature as an artery to transport the reader on a metaphoric river through a landscape of emotions. Whatever the feeling, whatever the season, the poems are full of water: rain, river, lake, gulf, ocean.” I am sure I am not the only cover designer who has a relatively extensive collection of rejected cover designs. I refer to them as my “salon des refusés”. This cover design took its starting point from an unused poetry cover sketch I had done a while back - The Stream Exposed with All its Stones for Véhicule Press. Both titles feature streams or rivers. For that earlier cover I was intrigued by having veins in an arm be a visual metaphor for a river. I felt this could be an opportunity to explore the idea further.
I started with a scientific illustration that I found on istockphoto, of veins and arteries in a human arm, and arranged the type as if they were names of rivers on a map.
Then I thought of using the direction of blood flowing away and back to the heart which worked well with the title split in two.
The sense was that the scientific illustration was interesting but a little cold, clinical and lacked whimsy. Often, when I reach this juncture in the cover design process I ask myself if maybe I am trying too hard to be clever. I decided to show the title as if it was pieces of paper floating down a river. I photographed the pieces of paper separately, with the type being added later. Hand drawn type is perhaps on the verge of being overused on book covers but in this case it made sense. I wanted the pieces of paper to be like missives sent from upstream.
I added in water lines on the pieces of paper in Photoshop. I like how it is a whimsical image but with an aspect of sadness or disappointment, with some of the pieces falling under the surface.
Final cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.