The concept of the book is to present 101 danish fine artists to the public in an annual publication. The cover illustration had to make the book 'eatable' for mainstream consumers and to make it stand out on the shelves in the mainstream bookstores.
The title of the book is '101 Artists' with the subtitle 'A tribute to diversity'. The book consists of a brief presentation of 101 artist. One spread per artist - Contact info on the left and work-examples on the right. We've put a lot of effort into the variation the work example pages, to avoid the boring experience of 101 identical spreads.
The title was given by the author and we just had to come up with an idea that didn't turn out too 'corny'. As mentioned, the cover also had to be mainstream but still true to the artsy contents of the book. Quite a challenge!
So we made this simple graphic and a bit artsy pattern of cool things to be in the background of the title. The title is made as a kind of logo to ensure durability as it is going to be used for the future versions of the book. The pattern in the background is heavily inspired by a project by graphic designer and illustrator Tim Bjørn. The logo is inspired by the signature/logo of the danish artist Hornsleth.
The red color of the logo and on the back of the book is supposed to be different each year - to create an explosion of colors on your bookshelf ;-)
For the type-nerds: the book is set in Adobe Garamond and the titles are Ministry by Rian Hughes of Device Fonts.
The pattern at the bottom of the post is the first version of the cover-pattern which was rejected by the client.