Awards Book Archive

Lifespan of Starlight
  • Winner

Designed by
Josh Durham
Category
Best Designed Young Adult Cover
Year
2016
Publisher
Hardie Grant Children's Publishing

About the Designer

Josh worked in magazine design before setting up his company Design by Committee under the mentorship of Australian book design luminary W.H. Chong. He draws upon a broad skill base to offer both illustrative and concept driven solutions to literary fiction, commercial fiction, YA, children’s, non fiction and illustrated book commissions for all of Australia’s leading publishers.

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Design Rationale

This book is the first of a trilogy of YA books about a time-travelling teenager, so the goal was to achieve a strong series look and feel that could be adapted to the trilogy. I started playing around with star maps and developed a typographical solution based on a playful 3D interpretation of those shapes. I presented this as a rough and then developed it further adding the line drawing of the central character. The title is embossed and letter key lines are Spot UV. We also picked out some stars to Spot UV too. The title type colour is a nod to glow in the dark ink! All illustration work and lettering are by Design by Committee.

Details
Dimensions
135 x 210 mm
No. pages
288
Special finishes
Spot UV
Credits
Internal Design
Patrick Cannon
Illustration
Josh Durham
Typesetting
Patrick Cannon
Printing
Griffin Press
Author
Thalia Kalkipsakis