Hillbilly Highway
Jacket design and custom type for Hillbilly Highway by Max Fraser. It was important that the cover conveyed the time and place of the subject matter: Midwest America in the mid 20th century. The solution was a custom typeface based on hand painted banners from the 1937 General Motors strike in Detroit—an event highlighted in the book. Paired with the type are images related to labor, country music, and automobiles.
Selected for the 2024 Association of University Presses: Book, Jacket, and Journal Show
Final jacket design
Examples of hand painted banners from the 1937 General Motors strike in Detroit. Letterforms isolated from the source image.
The custom typeface highlights defining characteristics from the source type. These include the spur serifs, tiny counterforms, lowercase-style ‘N’, angled terminals on the ‘S’, and the ‘G’ without a crossbar.