Poetry Book Design

Burning Sugar

by Cicely Belle Blain

The cover design for the poetry book, Burning Sugar, features licensed artwork by French illustration duo sacrée frangine. After choosing the artwork that had the strongest connection to the tone and content of the book, fleck’s task was to marry the title typography with the image. There is an emanating heat and burning to the illustrated scene with it’s warm color palette, but there is also a softness. The artwork features a high mountains and sloping hills, converging into a valley in warm pink, rust, mauve, and purple tones. There is a large orange looming sun. The sheer size of the ball of fire adds a subtle  unsettling undercurrent to the piece, that nods to the heavy subject matter of this body of work. 

The type also then needed to carry the weight of the poems. The design uses a very strong and heavy sans serif font to balance the warmth. The type is overlaid with a sandy texture to add depth and further connect it to the artwork. Burning Sugar is published by VS Books, an imprint of Arsenal Pulp Press. You can buy a copy of the book here.

Check out other cover designs by fleck creative studio, including other poetry books, on our cover archive.