PRINTCast: The PRINT Podcast Studio is a curated collection of cutting-edge podcasts we love about design, creativity, branding, books, and further subjects afield. Inside Front Cover is a show hosted by Sam Aquillano about the design process behind creating the cover for his forthcoming book about launching and growing Design Museum Everywhere.
It’s all come to this! After months of collaboration and creative process, the Proportion Design team has completed the cover of Sam Aquillano’s forthcoming book, Adventures in Disruption: How to Start, Survive, and Succeed as a Creative Entrepreneur. In this episode, Blake Goodwin, Paul Reiss, and Andrea Cincotta from Proportion unveil their final design to a very excited author. The final design is a refinement of a concept from round 2, which shows the title breaking through, and seemingly ripping through, the front cover to unveil the Design Museum’s signature orange brand color— representing Sam and team’s approach to finding their way through barriers in their effort to launch and grow the Design Museum. See the full cover design below.
How did the team get here? Proportion started with an in-depth discovery phase, where they sent Sam a questionnaire and interviewed him about his life, story, and book. They also gathered other books in the same genre to study those covers and uncover useful elements. Then they more fully detailed the audience for Adventures in Disruption, defining personas and labeling the market segment for this book as the Creative Biz-Curious. From there they generated three brand attributes: Passion, Creativity, and Expertise, and used those words to develop two distinct creative directions. Then they designed two rounds of concepts, each building off the last. Finally they absorbed Sam’s feedback and direction to refine the final design.
After seeing the design for the first time, Sam then shows the book cover to his Design Museum co-founder, Derek Cascio, and they discuss next steps for the book. Derek has a new creative venture launching soon, a beverage band called Thirst Burster, which they chat about as well. To wrap up the series, Sam, Blake, Paul, and Andrea discuss the project and what it meant to them — and where they go from here. Sam will launch a Kickstarter campaign in early 2023 to help fund the publication of Adventures in Disruption.
Listen in the player above or check it out on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Catch up with Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6, and Episode 7.
