To be published by Liveright on the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s death (June 15, 2021,) Ruth Scurr’s Napoleon: A Life Told in Gardens and Shadows is an unprecedented portrait of the Emperor seen through his engagement with the natural world.

Along with the brief for this project, Design Director Steve Attardo had given me a number of interesting images with which to play around and draw inspiration. One of them was this great image of Napoleon resting after working in the garden. I made a design around it. I decided to recolor the garden in blues reds and whites to have the garden symbolize France. I also thought the shot of blue would retail well. You’ll notice at this point of the process we had a different subtitle.

I wasn’t in the office when the finished jackets for Patsy arrived. The first time I saw them they were stacked neatly next to my keyboard on top of a few other hot-off-the-press jackets. I immediately inspected every line, felt the paper stock, ran my hands over the surface and exhaled in relief. Then smiled and wrapped every book on my window ledge with them. A wall of Patsy! This one was special for me. I started drawing its roadmap years ago, navigating conversations about race and sexuality, and sketching ideas that would be creatively challenging to myself and potentially for the company. I know I’m not curing cancer behind my iMac over here, but as I held this piece of paper soaked with vivid violet, orange, and red inks, I felt the weight of holding something I knew would be important to so many individuals. A portal to transport them into an imagined world where they would meet people whom they needed to meet. People who would help them find some inner peace and a place to channel their emotions, suppressed and otherwise. A tonic, in some ways, to the insensitive and close-minded chatter that serpentines it’s way through our society. When the design process began, I knew I needed to work from a place of authenticity and acuity for how we currently talk about love and equality. When the process ended however, I wondered, did any of that even matter?