AMONG A THOUSAND FIREFLIES

DESIGN FOR POETRY PICTURE BOOKS ILLUSTRATED WITH NATURE PHOTOGRAPHS AMONG A THOUSAND FIREFLIES, as part of an ongoing poetry series, was especially fun to design, since the plot-driven text provided the opportunity to break away from an established look. Rick Lieder’s amazing photographs of fireflies at night gave an interesting design challenge. Not only did I need to create characters who could follow the narrative of the poem, but I also wanted to make sure the poem itself was legible without taking away from the bright spots of the fireflies. The solution was to knock out type from an overprinted Pantone block— this allowed the text to seeming to glow on the page while still being incorporated with the artwork, using the soft backgrounds of the photographs to hint at shadows and show depth.