So – the dustwrapper illustration I did for Lomax Press is published, attached to the limited edition book Take Thee A Sharp Knife! The story is one of a series of humorous detective novels by Ruthven Todd, writing as R. T. Campbell, with a rather rotund Professor Stubbs as the detective. The book is fantastically visual which was lucky for me – Stubbs is always puffing away on a rank-smelling pipe and if I remember rightly is likened to a baby elephant! Apologies for my own slightly dodgy photos below…
Omnis Partners in Glasgow did the crisp and lovely typesetting and design and reused the silhouette of Stubbs to separate each section of the book:
Working on the (hopeful!) assumption that more in the series would be published, the spine also has a small vector of a knife, so this would change with each story and depict a relevant object. Michiel at Omnis Partners reused this as the end of chapter signifier, which I think works really well.
I appreciated that the publisher Forbes Gibb elected to keep the back cover clear of text. It is incredibly close to my original concept so I am really pleased, it’s very exciting to see it in print.
Looking forward to reading it properly with Forbes’s annotations, and all the introductory material!
Wow, really impressive, well done you! 🙂
Well thanks very much Mr Cole! How’s you doin?
Just come back from holiday last week so apart from having to go back to work I’m doin just fine!
Glad to see you’ve finally sorted out emailing replies to comments as well 😉
Yeah how long did it take…? Never nice coming back from holiday, hope you got the sunshine wherever you were!
I’ve just reviewed this for the Shots Magazine website:
http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/book_reviews_view.aspx?BOOK_REVIEW_ID=400
You’ll see that I call it “One of the finest productions I have seen”.
Nice work.
Hi LJ
Apologies for my slow response! Many thanks for your great comments and for the referral to your review, it is much appreciated. I will make sure I pass it on to Forbes and Peter in case they missed it. It is a very entertaining story and I’m assured that there are some other great ones in the series, so here’s hoping these to come to fruition too!
All best wishes
Becky