‘Sprawling cities. Lawless rural landscapes. A long and unforgiving history. Here is where the winds blow cold and the nights are long.’

Dead Ink has earned a reputation for publishing beautifully designed books, and I had the opportunity to create the cover for their Northern crime anthology Motives Unknown. The final design combines blurred industrial typography with a photograph of a Manchester tower block by Valentin Petkov.

The design process involved exploring a mixture of photographic and graphic routes to convey a sense of crime and Northern England. Alternative options included an illustrative crime chase amidst the title type, a blood red compass symbol, spying typographic eyes, angular handwriting raining down onto the Blackpool tower and the Angel of the North as a police shooting target.

Motives Unknown features 12 captivating crime stories from Northern writers and is set for release in early May 2025.

I’m particularly proud to have my cover design for Jimmy Juliano’s Dead Eleven recognised as the Best Crime/Thriller Cover at the 2024 ABCD Awards. The Academy of British Cover Design’s awards ceremony was a wonderful celebration of the year’s top book covers. A special thanks to Jamie Keenan and Jon Gray for organising such a friendly and supportive event. The winning cover’s art direction was masterfully guided by Jason Booher at Dutton Books.

I had a lot of fun designing this early 90’s VCR inspired cover. Once we honed in on this direction it became a fantastic collaborative process, incorporating additional text from the editor for the cassette label and unique elements like a skull forming the shape of a cliff edge.

During the initial design phase, I also explored several other concepts that reflected themes in Juliano’s inspiring writing, including 90s aesthetics, the OJ Simpson Bronco car chase, a creepy island and curtain-twitching neighbours. Some of my favourite alternative designs are showcased below.