Last year I taught the class for the first time, and I was honestly surprised how much fun I had. The feedback from the students was overwhelmingly positive as well, so I’m not shy to call the class a great success.

The class is strictly hands-on and non digital. The first thing you’ll notice when you walk into the class room is the absence of computers. What you will see is piles of colored paper, vintage magazines, old photographs, exotic graphic fragments and other irresistible visual leftovers. Plus a bunch of busy people with glue on their fingers.

Every morning a new assignment is given and the day is spent creating beautiful art, which also happens to be solutions to the graphic problem of the day. The creative activity is only interrupted by Powerpoint presentations, group feedback and delicious lunches in the school’s cafeteria. No wait, there’s also afternoon coffee and treats.

Last year the quality of the students’ work was very high. Editorial illustrations, portraits and all other forms of collage surprised even the creators themselves (not to mention the teacher) with their beauty and originality.

Here are some examples:

There is still room in the class, so please join us and sign up if you can make it!

See some of my own collages here, here and here.

During Auster and Hustvedt’s performance together they both read from the other’s new novel.
They revealed that they had never done that before, neither in public or in private. I made a couple of rough little videos of these literary firsts. They can be seen here and here.

I was happy to participate in the festival with a New York photo exhibition (see a few of the pictures here) and a talk about my book jackets (see samples here) I also made a couple of display cases of my work. It was fun to show some of the actual source material I use for my covers.

This corner of the exhibition shows my fascination with Gingko leaves, which I have used several times in my design work.

And here I show the cigar box I used as inspiration for Siri Hustvedt’s “A Plea for Eros” jacket. Also the clockwork that (in great magnification) became the cover for Jan Stage’s “Witness to History”.

Visiting book stores in Copenhagen, it was great to see Hustvedt’s and Auster’s books (with my covers) strongly represented.
I had not planned this, but it was good to see how nicely the jackets were color coordinated.

No spring trip to Copenhagen without a visit to Tivoli Gardens. On top of the food, drinks and rides there are plenty of colors and patterns to inspire the designer in us all…

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I have now made covers for all the 7 books Siri has released with her Danish publisher, Per Kofod:

Her latest novel, “The Summer Without Men” (Danish: Sommeren uden mænd), follows Mia Fredricksen, who leaves her New York life (and wandering husband) to spend the summer in her small Minnesota home town with her mother’s friends, a neighbor Lola, and a group of young girls in her creative writing class.

My first idea for the cover was to create a picture of one of the characters in the book, Lola’s toddler daughter, that we first meet wearing a Harpo Marx wig and holding a stuffed animal giraffe. But I decided it would be wrong to pick a single person from the large cast, and it would also give the impression that the book is mainly about motherhood.

Instead I found an “In-Camera Montage” I did a couple of years ago:

This piece is from a series I did of trees. On the day I made it I had brunch at Bowery Bar. This restaurant has a wonderful garden, and the night before there had been an outdoor movie show. A white sheet was suspended between the trees, and the strong midday sun made beautiful shadows on it. The foliage created ever changing patterns and from time to time a fly would land to add some extra animation. Pretty soon I forgot all about my meal and were composing floral patterns in my camera. In-camera Montage is a technique I have developed, and it is done by making partially overlapping exposures on the negative. No digital manipulation is involved – just an old Leicaflex and a roll of Tri-X.

I like this image because it gives the feeling of summer without showing actual trees or leaves. It is a projection of summer; a movie – the closest relative to the novel. The fly might seem like a foreign element, but it is really very appropriate. Not only is it a great focal point, but in the novel’s harmonious environment of women, the unsolved problem of Mia’s domestic situation is always present. Her missing husband is really the fly in the ointment. And there he is, center stage left – not really there, but always present.

Whether the reader (or writer) sees it like that, I don’t know, but that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

For design nerds, the typeface is Snell Roundhand, drawn by Matthew Carter who recently released the much celebrated font Carter Sans.

I find Snell to be a very nice, simple and legible script without any unnecessary decorations. The script typeface works well with the semi abstract image, and it also ties the cover to the previous novel I did for Siri. The typeface on “The Sorrows of an American” is Dalliance (designed by Frank Heine), a slightly more decorative but still legible font.

The publisher was very happy, Siri found the cover lovely and liked the fly.

The book will be out this spring. Read it!

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Jan. 14

When Cecilia asked Juan how many days in a year, he was amazed to find the correct answer on the claim check for his sports jacket.

It was around this time little Billy realized that he liked his aunt Ruth much more than his own mom.