This typographic rendering for a book cover is referential to historical type design. In Victorian days, many fonts were drawn as if they were constructed of branches, or logs, or leaves or any kind of flora and fauna from the natural world. We revisited this same idea, but with a camera instead of a brush. The story is about the King of the Gaulic tribes, and their battles against the armies of Caesar. The Gauls found inspiration and wisdom under the branches of the Tree of Wisdom, a huge oak. These letters are constructed by hand from oak branches from that very same tree.

The Druid King is a historical fantasy of the battle between of the tribes of Gaul, and Julius Caesar’s conquering army. The Romans fought with steel and sword, while the Gauls derived their strength and magical powers from the forest, in particular from the “Tree of Knowledge,” a mighty oak (and maybe the mushrooms growing under it). Talking twigs seemed an apt analogy for their, um, trips. Doyle says of his cover design, “In the historical fantasy section in bookstores, who can bear another sword-hoisting warrior on a stallion in the mist?”

Our original construction of this twig type had many more branches, with wild criss-crossing, and looked more like a bunch of brambles with a message. At the editor’s request, we were able to tone down the underbrush to enhance the legibility of the type, using Photoshop, effectively as a method of pruning.