Nabokov: Transparent Things

John Gall at Random House invited me to take part in a project whereby 21 designers are invited to create a cover for reissues of Nabokov’s books … but within the prescribed format of creating a specimen box (Nabokov collected butterflies) with pins and “paper”, to create the cover.

There were wonderful covers by Carin Goldberg, Sam Potts, Michael Bierut, Stephen Doyle and the ever-amazing Martin Venezky, among others.

My book was “Transparent Things” so I used the pins to suspend 4 layers of acetate, with dots of transparent ink on each later. Above is the actual book cover; below, a shot of the box in sunshine.

2009