From custom book covers to postcard sets, game packaging to custom prints, here's a brief overview of some of our projects with publishers.
CLIENT WORK
Publishing Collaborations
CLIENT: JUNIPER BOOKS
Custom Book Jackets
We collaborated with Juniper Books to develop designs for four collections of hardcover books: Jane Austen, The Bronte Sisters, Willa Cather and George Eliot. The books feature original Obvious State art which artfully cover the clothbound hardcover volumes published by Everyman’s Library.
"There are few authors as well-known as Jane Austen and few novels as influential and beloved as her classics. We partnered with the creatives at Obvious State to design one-of-a-kind art for her complete works. With the artists' distinct style, Austen's novels are given a modern treatment while still retaining their timeless appeal."
CLIENT: PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Bibliophilia Postcards
We collaborated with Penguin Random House to produce a boxed postcard set of our first round of literay illustrations. The collection features bold, graphic interpretations of 50 provocative literary lines from authors such as Woolf, Dostoevsky, Wilde, Poe & Austen.
Note: This collection doesn't include as many women as our Women Writers Collection.
CLIENT: GIBBS SMITH
Parlor Game Packaging
We partnered with the fine folks at Gibbs Smith on the box design for The Parlor Games - a new line of literary card games. The design brief was to keep it minimalist and fun to mirror the simplicity and laugh-out-loud nature of the game.
Together with the team at Gibbs Smith, we decided on bold colors, and used the cards and subtitle call out as a double exclamation point. We developed a custom icon for each of three themes: Dracula, Shakespeare and Pride and Prejudice.
CLIENT: DOUBLEDAY
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Created in collaboration with Mr. Ferlinghetti and Doubleday books for the release of Little Boy.
Part fiction, part autobiography, this stream-of-consciousness narrative enthralled us, and we were drawn to the romance of this quote in particular. It summons images of coffee-fueled poetry benders in Greenwich Village, beat generation poets, romantic dissidents, reaching into the ether of language for sense-making, lifting up the wall-to-wall carpet of American culture to see where all the dirtiest secrets had been swept.
There's so much extraordinary language in Mr. Ferlinghetti's work but we gravitated to this quote, perhaps a bit for the sake of nostalgia, but it also sums up a fundamental lesson he has taught us: that meaning-making is first and foremost a communal act.
CLIENT: PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Subtext Postcards
We partnered with Penguin Random House to create Subtext - a collection of cheeky postcards.
Classic literature meets contemporary colloquialisms. The Subtext collection alludes to the unspoken thoughts, implicit meanings and unadulterated truths that prove human experiences are timeless.
CLIENT: DOUBLEDAY
Custom Print
We collaborated with Doubleday on a print to celebrate the launch of Nell Stevens' book The Victorian and the Romantic. The book opens with a quote on the writing process from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's epic poem Aurora Leigh. We responded to the idea of one’s audience being solely a future self who looks back with pride on achievements, rather than a preoccupation with current social image, imaginary fears and expectations.
This illustration is now available as part of our Women Writers Collection.
CLIENT: ANDREWS MCMEEL
Custom Print
We collaborated with Andrews McMeel Universal and Najwa Zebian to create an illustration for the live poetry event These Are Our Words, hosted by Read Poetry, Belletrist, Obvious State and Bowery Poetry in New York City on Sunday, April 7, 2019.
We drew our inspiration for the illustration from a quote by Najwa Zebian: "These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb."
We love the idea embedded in this quote, and the clever use of antithesis. In our illustration, a mountain is inverted and mirrored, transforming itself from a burden into a benefit. And as with many situations in life, it's often all about perspective.