America Swings

Josh Baker, Art Director/Designer at Taschen Publishing, needed a cover design for a book by New York photographer Naomi Harris. The book: America Swings. The subject: a photographic odyssey spanning the 50 States chronicling the swinging sex lives of everyday Americans. My challenge was to come up with a cover design that would encapsulate the “Route 66” flavor of Ms. Harris’ travels and communicate the uninhibited/explicit nature of the subject without spelling it out on the cover.  For the cover’s swingin’ blonde figure I got a little help from my wife, illustrator Laura Smith. I then created one of the more complex graphics of my career—this time working almost exclusively in Photoshop—as opposed to Illustrator which is my usual application of choice. I also created a detailed map of Naomi’s travels across America for the book’s endpapers.