self published author
John Crawley The Perfect Food
E
ISBN: 978-1-312-51390-7 johncrawleybooks.com
ver since I got here, I have been on guard. What I eat, what I drink, what I breathe. It is scary as hell. Panic, I tell you. It was panic. You would have, too. You see you would have been awakened at night by that bump against the house. The dog barking at three in the morning. The sound of the pump action shot gun forcing a shell into the chamber. It was an alarm that we heard. You would have heard it, too. First a neighbor down the street. Or someone you went to church with or the lady who wore the netting around her shortcropped hair at the kids’ school cafeteria. They were dead. Just like that. Then a cop and a minister and the head of public works. Gone. From The Perfect Food by John Crawley, johncrawleybooks. com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
80
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015
cover story from cover designer Ted Karch
C
over development for The Perfect Food was as much the result of passion as design. Raised in an atmosphere of healthy eating, I’ve always been acutely aware of what’s in the food I eat, paying particular attention to added ingredients and processes that are often unhealthy and— sometimes—even dangerous. So when John approached me about designing the cover, I couldn’t wait to get started. My first objective was to find a photo (or, in this case, a collection of photos) that would convey a seemingly natural environment—a maturing field of corn drenched in sunlight— then incorporate details such as a stormy sky and dying corn stalks to create a final image that foreshadows the darker events revealed in the book. The final touch was to design a typographic solution for the title that would further reflect the book’s twists and turns. Thus the backward “f” in the word “perfect.” From a visual perspective, the modification looks good. But balance and symmetry aside, it’s still a defect.