musician's biography ~ book design

this is one of the biggest projects i've worked on, a biography book of a russian grunge musician, a frontman of 7rasa band, Sasha Rastich. they perform grunge/alternative rock with some references to indian philosophic ideas which find their reflection in the cover and merch design. So, the concept was to create a book design based on the visual key, develop it, make it contemporary and suitable for a book. I made all the design from scratch: cover art, book layout, text formatting, helped pick the images, scanned and edited them, where needed.

working with text was a very special experience to me. considering it's a biography, i did my best to keep the balance between preserving author's peculiar manner and correcting stylistic imperfections. my work was also to keep the logics and structure of the text, make it clear to someone who's not a fan and may not know some terms and names.

the book was titled On the Swing, which refers to Swing, 7rasa second album and first big success. this is also a metaphor of positive and negative emotions that cannot be divided. 

some examples of text spreads

i chose PT sans as the basic font and Philosopher font for the headlines to add some indian spicy touch to the project.

the headpiece is also worthy mentioning: this is a simplified version of the band's emblem which has two alterations. the empty sun is used to mark two introductions and the table of contents, the sun with a number in it marks the beginning of a new chapter.

some examples of photo spreads

while working with images, i had to solve the problem of combining varioius kinds of pictures: black & white, sepia, colour; dark and bright; photos and scans; images of different proportions. moreover, every image refers to a certain part of the text, which made the task even more complicated. i devided images into a few sections, arranged the pictures within each one and placed those sections along the story, so that the text pages were printed with black only. this trick helped make the layout structured and avoid pretty expensive full-coloured printing. 

Sasha and me presenting the book at Imagine Radio & Record shop, St.Petersburg, RU

The book gained a warm welcome and support from the band fans, fellow musicians and the media.

with Sasha Rastich and Feo of Psychea, one of the main Russian alternative rock bands