Cerco Lavoro | book design
Cerco Lavoro (in english "Looking for a job") is a book of real stories written by Calogero Messina and published in november 2017 by Edizioni Efesto. The book describes real situations happened to the author, which started to look for a new job in Italy at the age of 49 yo. To design the cover, I tried to pay attention to his recurrent symbolism: surely there is a lot of melancholy, shame, fear of not making it, the desire to be elsewhere. The fear of floating in his own mistakes and in the meantime feeling the constant weight of the sky. Among the recurring figures, there’s a lot of references to the stars (especially the falling ones!), to seeing the bottom, getting to touch it and trying to give himself a boost.
I decided to keep the elements of irony and surreality by combining them with a hint of melancholy and taking up the salient themes of the book. I mixed the weight of the sky and the bottom of the sea in a single visual: an astronaut exploring the sea depth! Here we can find the simplest interpretation, given even before reading the book: "it’s hard to find a job and even the astronauts end up looking for it in the last place where they would imagine to find it". Reading the book, however, we will end up giving a completely different weight to the meaning of the cover.
I also made a particular choice. Sky and sea are inverted. The initial illusion will be an astronaut in the blue, where it is normal to be. But soon we will realize that it is not the right blue! The scene is upside down, he does not explore the universe but falls into the sea, like the shooting star we see in the sky below. At the top, there are plants and other marine details of the seabed. Therefore the illustration makes sense in both sides!
I decided to keep the elements of irony and surreality by combining them with a hint of melancholy and taking up the salient themes of the book. I mixed the weight of the sky and the bottom of the sea in a single visual: an astronaut exploring the sea depth! Here we can find the simplest interpretation, given even before reading the book: "it’s hard to find a job and even the astronauts end up looking for it in the last place where they would imagine to find it". Reading the book, however, we will end up giving a completely different weight to the meaning of the cover.
I also made a particular choice. Sky and sea are inverted. The initial illusion will be an astronaut in the blue, where it is normal to be. But soon we will realize that it is not the right blue! The scene is upside down, he does not explore the universe but falls into the sea, like the shooting star we see in the sky below. At the top, there are plants and other marine details of the seabed. Therefore the illustration makes sense in both sides!
Art Direction & Visual: Alessio Paniccia
Illustration: Alessio Paniccia
Client: Calogero Messina, Edizioni Efesto
Photographer: Alessio Paniccia
Publisher: Edizioni Efesto
Illustration: Alessio Paniccia
Client: Calogero Messina, Edizioni Efesto
Photographer: Alessio Paniccia
Publisher: Edizioni Efesto
Type: Archer and Gotham for the cover, Garamond inside.
Programs: Adobe InDesign for the book project, Adobe Photoshop for the illustration.
Programs: Adobe InDesign for the book project, Adobe Photoshop for the illustration.
A special thanks to the author Calogero Messina for wanting me in the forward of the book.
Poster for the presentation event of the book:
Photos by the customers:
THANKS FOR WATCHING.
