The project

Digital typesetting and book cover design for Viva Nothing by Rick Rien. The book is a journal of a self-confessed gambler and is autobiographical fiction. The cover uses a painting by the author overlayed with lettering for the book title and author name.

Cover design

When Rick asked me to do the cover for the book we quickly settled to use one of the author's paintings as the background for the cover. For the title I initially tried going down the route of grunge graphic design, but in the end I used a nearly empty Pilot pen to write out the name of the book. It matches the rough ride that is life as a gambling addict.

Typesetting

For the text of the book I used Granjon as the typeface. It has a classic look that doesn't get in the way of reading the text.