Penguin Cover Design Award 2022

The brief was to re-design the book jacket for Dara McAnulty’s Diary of a Young Naturalist. The dark simple tree against the complex colourful background represents Dara’s emotional shifts from dark to light. Birds are such a key theme in the book, so it felt important to include them on my cover in some way. I chose to draw birds in the form of murmurings, portraying their busy movements which are actually very systematic. Fundamentally I wanted my design to convey the atmosphere that Dara creates in his mind. A sense of wildness, freedom and excitement, designed in a contemporary way to reflect his age and enthusiasm towards nature.