As part of an effort to move more communication and content off social media and back to spaces and platforms we have more control over, I’m going to start trying to post more here, especially the more long-format, image rich, or text rich things that should really be here instead of Instagram anyway [I’m getting tired of the algorithm of “3 ads, 1 shocking yet dubious political post, 3 ads, 1 post from someone I don’t remember following, 1 post about a media star I’ve never heard of, 3 ads, AI slop, another shocking yet dubious political post, 3 ads, and on and on”]. To that end, here is my first entry of a “design round-up” documenting my recent design projects that have gone out into the world.

For over a decade I have been doing all the cover design work for the small, leftist book publisher Common Notions (who I also sometimes publish with). It’s been really fun, challenging, enjoyable, and frustrating to craft the look of the press, navigate the demands of publishers/distributors/authors, and still make things that look good. Here are some images of the last half dozen book I’ve designed for them.

In addition, we’ve started trying to craft additional materials to go with each book, starting with Andrew Ross’ Weather Report, for which I designed an oversized broadsheet (if you want a copy, get in touch with Common Notions!):

And here are two the most recent titles:

I also got a message earlier in the year from an old friend and zinester in Baltimore, China Martens. She just published her first novel, and asked me to design the cover, and here it is! You can get the book directly from her HERE.

Over the past six months or so I’ve been asked by the cool UK magazine Resurgence & Ecologist if they could use some of my art for illustrations. They’ve used two pieces so far, and both look great in the pages of the mag:

And finally, for the past year and a half I’ve been selling off my mass market paperback collection (much of which was the basis for my long running Judging Books By Their Covers blog post series here on Justseeds) at local anarchist book and record shop The PIT, and making zines/book lists for each months themed selection. It’s been a really fun opportunity to practice designing for riso, and if you aren’t ever in Brooklyn, you can pick up sets of the zines HERE.