Project: Creating Book Covers

I have been an avid reader since I was small, yet my love for it had a fading period for a while before finally returning to it, and it was all thanks to Mark L. Danielewski's House of Leaves. It immediately captures you in the weirdness of it, completely challenging the way I read going forward and was a whirlwind of plot points, along with its structure.

Here the text speaks for itself, and the words in this book alone often guide you through its most frustrating parts, as different storylines intersect into confusion.

here lies the main draw of this book... how strange it is

Centered around a family's discovery of their house being not what it seems, the novel descends into a labyrinth of epic proportions, the story of the Minotaur brought up time and time again, often to the point where it becomes overwhelming. But I very much enjoy its most nonsensical segments, when reality folds in on itself, a masterclass of surrealism wrapped up in themes of death and family trauma. Here are some fan covers I created as a tribute (and a school project...).

Original Cover

The original cover pays homage to the small details, a sliced cover on the side which opens to reveal a great mess of rulers and miscelleanous items, an orange color palette I tried to incorporate in one of my covers (shown below).

All done in Illustrator, these are all simply rough sketches, so don't come after me (please).

This cover in particular is inspired by old leather books I would come across in the library, often in a somewhat plain, with one large sigil that immediately catches my interest.

If you haven't noticed already, the Penguin brand is present throughout all my covers, even though House of Leaves hasn't been published by them. I mainly did this since I have grown fond of the way Penguin designs their Classics series, and I wish for this book to get to that level someday.

Main Inspo: Penguin Series Covers