Motives Unknown

‘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.