Hillbilly Highway

Selected for the 2024 Association of University Presses: Book, Jacket, and Journal Show

Hillbilly Highway by Max Fraser details how race and migration in mid-western America shaped the current political landscape. My design for the book jacket included custom type 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. In addition to the custom type, I worked on the visual concepts and generating the production mechanical.

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.