Gulliver's Travels
A full paperback sleeve for Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, using a crowned rooster, crushed eggs, and condensed typography to interpret the novel's political satire.
- Deliverables
- Front cover, spine, back cover, illustration
This cover focuses on the conflict between the Big-Endians and Little-Endians, who disagree over which end of an egg should be cracked. The project translates this seemingly minor dispute into a visual metaphor for authority, division, and the disproportionate consequences of political conflict.
The challenge was to create a cover that communicated the satirical concept through illustration while maintaining the character of a printed literary edition.
- Cover concept and illustration
- Typography and layout
- Front cover design
- Spine and back cover
- Full paperback sleeve
Eggs, roosters and a very silly war
I gathered references for Swift's satire and for the imagery I could use to stand in for it. The illustrations I pulled share a look: aged paper, muted yellows and browns, and bodies that don't add up, like zipped mouths, covered faces and mismatched heads.
One image for the whole argument
Each sketch lays out the full wrap, with an author portrait and text columns on the back. The fronts try different ideas, all aimed at the same question: could a rooster crushing eggs carry the whole war between the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians in a single image?
My first front was an animal head, which would have meant picking one voyage. The egg war is the part people remember, and it holds the whole satire: a fight over how to open an egg that costs lives. A rooster crushing eggs says that in one image. I gave the rooster a crown and a human arm so it reads as someone with power, and drained the eggs to grey so the only warm thing on the cover is the one doing the damage.
