When he was a child, Matt Stevens and his neighbor used to bend down and prepare for a game of Flick Football. Stevens was always the cowboys. His neighbor was always the Steelers. The only problem was that they could barely finish the game itself.
“We often were left without time, because it would spend a lot of time doing the game poster,” says Stevens.
North Carolina with headquarters in Independent designer For a long time he has had a special ability to use his creative skills to give life to the fictitious worlds based on the IP of the real world, and, well, he tracks that if someone was going to get an idea as random as Good films like old books work, it would be him.
Mash-up of the middle of the century
Stevens’ new book, which offers exactly what promises the title on more than 200 covers of false vintage books, is available today. And it works deliciously.
As for how he found becoming the book paradigm on his head first, around 2020, he was helping his friend, the former NFL player turned into the entertainment producer Ryan Kalil, to present a project. Looking for a way to give a potential film project a unique visual turn, Stevens designed an image of him as an old linen book.
“I have always loved all the combat culture,” he says. “Putting something in a new context and seeing it differently has always been very interesting for me.”
After losing his father when he was young, Stevens says that the cinema offered a cathartic exit, and developed a passion for life for it. Then, after creating that first film as a book for launch, he realized that he had encountered a new parallel project that combines the things he loves, and moved on.
He began to put his initial creations in social networksAnd they resonated. After having initially experienced with the aesthetics of the cover of the early 1900s, he discovered its optimal point in the design of the cover of the book of mid -century (it loves particularly Penguin’s work during the time).
“Anything where the idea is reduced to its essential elements is really satisfactory to me,” he says. “And I think that much of that appeared in the things of the mid -century where they print in very limited colors, and are reducing it to the most naked details.”
His chameleonic ability to design through styles and times is a testimony of the small stores and agencies where he worked over the years, where each member of an agile team was responsible, well, of everything.
In the book, that is manifested in a dentado turn of Saul Bass in Cameron Crowe’s Say something; A true Push Pin Studios Take in Mad Max: Fury Road; to Terminator cover That feels almost as if it were a lost pocket story of the Roman Empire.
At first, I doubted the IP that had a deep legacy of specific images associated with it. But finally hugged the emotion, as in the case of, for example, its unexpected version of GAPANS. Breaking the title typographically establishes it immediately in a new land, and the ominal silhouettes established against the Limerick Green Fund offer a new look at a loved and well worn property.
“It was exciting for me to go Okay, everyone knows that there are a million iconic images of this thing. How do I think of something that is different?“
Start a collection
Designing a false book for a very real movie is not different from the design of a real cover for a very real book.
“I love the medium of book design,” says Stevens. “For me, it is one of the most pure and satisfactory challenges of the way it is a poster.”
Sometimes it begins with the idea you want to explore, sometimes it starts with a style you want to play. In any case, when it is proposed to design a false cover for a movie, I see it again, a process that can reveal the movie in a completely new way.
“It’s just a different way of looking [movies]. You are looking at iconic songs and images, “he says.” I think I simply deepened my love for some of them. “
As for its subjects, he says he is not willing to create a “better” cinematographic list. Rather, he goes with the movies he loves, the films that inspired him, or films that look like a fertile terrain for a new turn. He says that the latter is often what resonates with the spectators, such as his cover for Mad Max: Fury Road.
After reaching the 100 “books”, in 2020 he launched a Kickstarter campaign to produce a book of them, which brought $ 57,000, almost doubling its initial objective. When he designed 100 more, he started a second volume. Meanwhile, a literary agent had been given one of Stevens’ impressions and hung it on his wall. Someone in his office asked if he liked Stevens’ book, but the agent had an idea that one existed. Then she approached him, and that is why Chronicle is now publishing a new volume that collects the best of her first two, with 60 new additional covers (and a set of 100 postcards boxes).
The ironic? The design of fake book covers has taken Stevens to concerts designing other real. At the moment, a break from its fictitious jackets has been taken, but when someone lands in such a curious mixture of passion and success of secondary projects, can they ever? In fact Give up?
“I just saw Sinners This weekend, and it’s like, Oh, I would love to work on that“He says with a smile.” So who knows? “
#favorite #films #reinvented #book #covers
