The Road by Cormac McCarthy is an incredible tale about a father and his son, who despite the apocalyptic state of the world, continue to survive for not so much as for themselves but for each other. 

I wanted to use the road as inspiration for the book cover without actually ever drawing a typical street road of some kind.  That is when I realized that the road in the book can be seen as a physical recording of their journey and that it can be visually drawn in all sorts of various ways. For instance, they meet all kinds of people on the road who for better or for worse leave an important impression in their minds, where some of the best conversations and reflections by the main characters come from having just met someone on the road or where the road led them. The road is just like life where one can meet all sorts of people who undoubtedly shape your perspectives, morals, decisions, and actions. And so, the first cover is meant to reflect the importance of the road as a symbol of one’s journey through life and the significance of the people that affect it.  Readers will be able to look back to the cover and understand that I’ve recreated the road the two traveled on.

The second cover is also a different take on physically representing a road and journey and I thought, a book is only as long as the amount of pages it has and therefore the characters’ story is just as long where each page is a recording of their entire existence.  They are brought to life in the 287 pages my edition of the book happens to be and I thought that would be a really interesting way to depict their “road,” and their life.