Jet Purdie ∵ Book Cover Design ∵ Art Direction ∵ Illustration

by Laura Baggaley

Book cover design by Jet Purdie

Food is scarce in Newbeck. Rations are meagre. Everyone grows what they can on government-allotted Squares of land, using seeds and soil bought from mysterious megabusiness, the Green Cultivation Corporation.

One hot day, a strange girl rides into town wearing a sunhat as big as a bicycle wheel. She arrives alone, on a desert track from nowhere, full of questions no-one’s ever asked before. Local boy Sam is fascinated by her. Why won’t she talk about her family and where she lives? Why is she so curious about his way of life? And why can’t he get her out of his head . . .

A dystopian eco-romance for young adults, Dirt shows that even on stony ground, hope can grow.

Art Direction / design by Jet Purdie
Illustration by Seth Pimentel / African Ginger

I really enjoyed working with Seth. Thank you so much for an amazing cover : )

by Kim Smejkal

Design by Jet Purdie
Young woman's face illustration by Arvitalya

Art Direction: Jet Purdie
Illustration: Alexis Snell

I created a re-jacket for a paperback, but sadly it never went to print

by Clémentine Beauvais

Book cover design / illustration by Jet Purdie

Published by Pushkin Children’s

I really enjoyed designing the Piglettes paperback re-issue. For me, there is something cool about designing for a French author an them approving the cover.

My aim was to make the young women look like a French flag through clothing and hair colour. Three young women and three bikes felt potentially repetitive, so I cropped each bike in different ways, so we wouldn’t have too see the same thing over-and-over. There were lots of great quotes from big names, so I made the quotes the important thing and designed the art around them. I’m very grateful Pushkin and Clémentine let me give the girls crazy long hair and no eyes or lips. I also stripped back the mechanics of the bikes, as the chains and gears were distracting.

Piglettes has also been performed as a play and illustrated as a graphic novel.

Synopsis
Mireille, Astrid and Hakima have just been voted the three ugliest girls in school by their classmates online. But are they going to sit around crying about it?

...Well, yes. But not for long! Climbing onto their bikes, the friends set off on a summer road trip to Paris. With luck, they’ll find fame, adventure and happiness on their journey, and still have time to scoff plenty of delicious food (and drink the odd glass of wine) along the way.      

Piglettes is a hilarious, beautiful and uplifting story of friendship, sausages, and setting yourself free.

Design and illustration by Jet Purdie
Title type lettering by Jan Bielecki

Art Direction: Jet Purdie
Illustration: Patrick Leger

Art Direction and type: Jet Purdie
Illustration: Patrick Leger

Art Direction: Jet Purdie
Illustration: Patrick Leger

Shortlisted for The Kitschies Inky Tentacle (cover art) award 2015

Art Direction / Design: Jet Purdie

Shortlisted for the ABCD (Academy of British Cover Design) awards 2016.

Art Direction: Jet Purdie
Design: Melissa Four

I explored several routes but none were quite right, so I contacted Melissa Four to inject some fresh energy and Mel nailed it!

Thanks for getting involved Mel - you life saver you!

Illustration & Design: Jet Purdie

I designed this cover in Penguin's The Originals series style. It was a really quick and fun project.

It's also a lovely book, written by the author when he was just seventeen. 

Illustration and design: Jet Purdie
Title Type: Patrick Knowles

I really liked the One paperback, so it was a slight challenge creating this re-jacket.

Design: Jet Purdie
Bird illustration: Annie Konst

I was handed this project with only two weeks before a final cover was needed for a sales visual. The project ended-up being fairly pleasant as I was left to just get on with it with minimal feedback.

The title font was inspired by WeTrsanfer.com and the colourway was inspired by the old Chicago Bears American football uniform.

It printed with two Pantones, foil, spot UV, emboss.

Design and illustration: Jet Purdie

Design & Illustration: Jet Purdie
Title type hand lettering: Peter Strain

This is the paperback edition for Sarah Crossan’s Moonrise.

My concept for the paperback edition of the Moonrise cover was to show the protagonist’s older brother (Ed Moon) in a prison cell … only in a more pretty, hopeful, eye-catching and metaphoric way, with the moon representing their surname and the birdcage representing prison.

I was a little bit inspired by Leonard Cohen’s The Future album cover artwork, which is very logo like and has a nice balance of pretty and grim, with it’s blue heart, hummingbird and handcuffs.

Art Direction and design: Jet Purdie
Illustration: Jet Purdie

Art Direction and design: Jet Purdie
Illustration: Andrea de Santis

Design by Jet Purdie
Cover photo by Wolfgang Mustain
Based on a cover from 20 years ago.

I offered to re-jacket the 20 Year Special Edition cover of Witch Child as my friend’s daughter is on one of Celia’s other covers and I wanted to try give the old photos a new lease of life.

I was also asked to explore illustration, but I was sure I could inject some contemporary style foiling over the old photos and still celebrate the original iconic cover photo.

I found an old Candlewick Press edition of Witch Child that used a font called La Figura and decided to re-draw it by hand and change the letter C. Personally, I felt the old title type on the original edition looked like an author name font, and the author font looked like a title font… so I switched the emphasis around. I also though Celia might like her name in gold foil - she deserves it, as its’ a great story.

To make it the 20 Year Anniversary Edition extra special I decided to overlay my favourite part of the protagonist’s journal over the photo in gold foil, plus add some little illustrations relevant to the text.

I hope you like it : )

Illustration by Fernanda Suarez
Design by Jet Purdie

Fernanda is an absolute dream to work with - so professional.

Thank you Fernanda : )

Art Direction: Jet Purdie
Illustration & lettering: Jan Bielecki

This was a fun project that I created while on holiday in Menorca with my daughter and Mum.

I didn’t really have time to take this project on, but I read the brief anyhow… then had an idea while losing at tennis and I had my daughter pose for a quick, blurry iPhone photo which I traced-over in Procreate that evening while watching a terrible film.

I shared the rough with lovely editor Alison Savage and the Neem Tree Press team and author – Laura Baggaley – and the only changes they wanted was a change of clothes (fair enough) and the ON/OFF switch moved to the ON position... which I wish I'd thought of.

I'm glad I did the project as it helped pay for the trillion Menorca friendship bracelets my daughter forced me to buy and never wore again : )

The red and yellow was inspired by the Spanish flag.

Design: Jet Purdie

By Kate Wiseman

Design by Jet Purdie

Art Direction & Design: Jet Purdie
Illustration: Jan Bielecki

Given the book features drones, I thought it would be cool to show the protagonist from a bird’s eye view, plus make the eye symbol (from the hardback) look like a target. Drones aren’t the most interesting shapes, so I decided to depict it as a shadow.

Art Direction / Design: Jet Purdie
Photos: Jan Bielecki
Spot varnish icons: Duncan. X
Model: Polly Norton

by Juno Dawson

Design by Jet Purdie
Typography by (film poster designer) Andy Nicholaou

This is a design from 2014, but this cover is still in print, which is cool.

Drip...drip...drip... In five days, Bloody Mary will come!

Art Direction / Design: Jet Purdie 

Art Direction / Design / Illustration: Jet Purdie
Concept inspired by The X-Files episode Never Again

Design: Jet Purdie
Illustration: Levente Szabó
Front Lines series design by Andrea Kearney

I pushed for a punky pink flouro Pantone with greys for the camo pattern... but they didn’t go for it.

Art Direction: Jet Purdie
Illustration: Petra Eriksson

Paperback Gryffindor House edition
Illustration by Levi Pinfold
Series Design by the amazing Andrea Kearney

When I started at Bloomsbury, Andrea asked if I wanted to put together four of the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets covers. It took me a while to get my head around the fact that Bloomsbury were publishing 8 version of the same book - 4 hardbacks and 4 paperbacks, in the Hogwarts School house colours, inverting the Levi Pinfold artwork for the paperbacks. So in total, the 7 main Harry books would become 56 books!

It should’ve been fun but the Bloomsbury server and old Mac I was issued were painfully slow.

Production and I had to oversee the printing of these books at CPI, ensuring the colours matched the four version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The print run was stomach churningly large.

Hardback Gryffindor House edition
Illustration by Levi Pinfold
Series Design by the amazing Andrea Kearney

When I started at Bloomsbury, Andrea asked if I wanted to put together four of the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets covers. It took me a while to get my head around the fact that Bloomsbury were publishing 8 version of the same book - 4 hardbacks and 4 paperbacks, in the Hogwarts School house colours, inverting the Levi Pinfold artwork for the paperbacks. So in total, the 7 main Harry books would become 56 books!

It should’ve been fun but the Bloomsbury server and old Mac I was issued were painfully slow.

Production and I had to oversee the printing of these books at CPI, ensuring the colours matched the four version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The print run was stomach churningly large.

Paperback Slytherin House edition
Illustration by Levi Pinfold
Series Design by the amazing Andrea Kearney

When I started at Bloomsbury, Andrea asked if I wanted to put together four of the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets covers. It took me a while to get my head around the fact that Bloomsbury were publishing 8 version of the same book - 4 hardbacks and 4 paperbacks, in the Hogwarts School house colours, inverting the Levi Pinfold artwork for the paperbacks. So in total, the 7 main Harry books would become 56 books!

It should’ve been fun but the Bloomsbury server and old Mac I was issued were painfully slow.

Production and I had to oversee the printing of these books at CPI, ensuring the colours matched the four version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The print run was stomach churningly large.

Hardback Slytherin House edition
Illustration by Levi Pinfold
Series Design by the amazing Andrea Kearney

When I started at Bloomsbury, Andrea asked if I wanted to put together four of the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets covers. It took me a while to get my head around the fact that Bloomsbury were publishing 8 version of the same book - 4 hardbacks and 4 paperbacks, in the Hogwarts School house colours, inverting the Levi Pinfold artwork for the paperbacks. So in total, the 7 main Harry books would become 56 books!

It should’ve been fun but the Bloomsbury server and old Mac I was issued were painfully slow.

Production and I had to oversee the printing of these books at CPI, ensuring the colours matched the four version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The print run was stomach churningly large.