I designed this book cover for a client who wanted to reintroduce the author, Owen Barfield. Barfield himself was an eccentric philosopher offering a re-evaluation of the ideas of the 19th century English Romantic movement. The cover expresses many of his ideas as I understand them.

Barfield argues that Western Culture has taken much meaning out of life and nature as a result of the scientific revolution. Thus, the rose, which signifies meaning, breaks away from the workers in the illustration, who stand for the scientific method at work in the world.  Yet Barfield believes that meaning needs to be deliberately brought back into our consciousness of the world, and he believes that scientific thought can help.  So the crane suggests that a version of the scientific method can help pull meaning back into its rightful place in our lives.

The paragraphs on the back of the cover are splayed out in such a way as to balance with the design of the front cover.  I felt that perfectly horizontally leveled type would be out of place right next to the front cover.  (Also, while the Lewis quote is 100% genuine, the Wittgenstein quote is made up.)

For the background of the flaps and spine, I used pictures of leaves and grass to symbolize, or at least suggest, nature - a reality which Barfield believes is important to our experience of meaning in life.  The backgrounds of the front and back covers, on the other hand, are from images of leaves which had left their pigment on cement after a heavy rain.  The image seemed very suggestive of Barfield's idea that nature and meaning (leaves) ought to imprint themselves onto the discoveries of the Scientific Revolution (concrete).

For this project I also wanted to use a Constructivist design style, due to various similarities between Barfield's philosophy and the Constructivist design philosophy.