Padre Pio Under Investigation

A new book detailing the Vatican investigation of Padre Pio, with documents from the Secret Archive.

I wanted Padre Pio to look isolated and lonely on the cover. The crucifix at the top is a photo I took in Lisbon, from a cathedral that collapsed in the big earthquake they had in the 18th century.

Manalive : book version

Click for a bigger view. I previously designed an audio book version of this.

I wanted the lettering to look hand lettered, but also wanted more precision than I had on the audio book. I laid out the type, printed it, and traced over with pen by hand to get the look I wanted.

Recent DVD covers

Looking for the King

Another cover that was worked, reworked, etc.



The initial draft was based on poster designs from the 1930's. I did a rough version (incomplete faces and hands on the figures, illustrated in Adobe Illustrator with textures added in Photoshop), but it was thought that it looked a bit too cartoonish.


After a few more drafts, we ended up with the final, which brings together several scenes and themes from the book. I used several photo elements, including one photo I took myself (the figure with the spear). The end result looks a bit more "Narnia" and less retro. The author was a great help in identifying things that needed to be on the cover.

Paths of the Messiah

I actually designed this cover a year ago, but delays in editing held it up.

The Red Book of Chinese Martyrs

This book, an account of recent martyrs in China, was first published in Italian. Here's the Italian cover:

The art director asked me to create an English language version of the cover, which I did.

After some discussion, it was decided that the English language version didn't flow well. So I make several comps. The shoe-shaped notes written in Chinese that feature on all covers are a testimony of what happened to a Catholic girl who was imprisoned. The notes were slipped into a priest's shoe and smuggled out. The girl is pictured on this next cover. After being released from prison, she was forced into marriage with a Communist Party member, and nothing more is known about her life.

After a few more drafts, we settled on this:

I was a little leery of it at first, wondering about the violence depicted. But after deciding to crop the faces of the Red Guards, which I felt made the cover more powerful (showing a faceless, oppressive government in action), I finished it up. The final has spot gloss on the lettering, and the back cover shows some of the victims of Communist persecution profiled in the book.

Fra Lawrence Lew

Dominican Brother Lawrence Lew is a source of inspiration. Located at Blackfriars, he has managed to photograph many of the most beautiful churches and chapels in England, and during his travels has also photographed Rome, Lourdes, and other centers of Catholic faith and culture. His photography is on Flickr here.

As well as being a gifted photographer, Br. Lawrence also writes for The New Liturgical Movement.

I first used one of Br. Lawrence's photos for the cover of Faith and the Future.

With the new book, Handbook of Catholic Apologetics, the powers that be wanted a cover that illustrated a variety of concepts. After pondering for a while and creating a few mockups, I decided to revisit the rich trove of stained-glass images that Br. Lawrence had on Flickr. From there, everything fell into place.

The final cover is matte with spot-gloss on the images and lettering.

The Well and the Shallows

The Well and the Shallows is a collection of essays by G.K. Chesterton. I worked on several ideas (lost now, since I worked on this book three years ago), but since we had published several books within recent years that used photographs of Chesterton on the cover, I thought I would try something different. Most caricatures I found had been used by other publishers as well, so I decided to try my hand at one. After a few tries, I came up with a caricature that the art director approved. The pen drawing (thanks to my trusty Microns) was then colored in Photoshop using a limited palette to imitate a book cover from the 1930’s I had found and liked.


This is one of the few covers I've designed that I still like.

The Death of a Pope

The Death of a Pope is a thriller by Piers Paul Read, probably best known for his non-fiction book, Alive. It was pretty cool working on a book by him, as I've read a number of his novels and I've been a fan for years.

The book involves a plot against the papacy and a young British woman who gets involved in it inadvertently. I can't say too much more without spoiling the story!


I needed to have an image that conveyed a bit of the story without getting too involved. Once concept was a demon under the Vatican, or under the Sistine Chapel, with smoke. This didn't really work beyond the sketch stage without starting to look comical. One of the other ideas, shown above, was to depict a shadowy figure with a briefcase in front of St. Peter's Basilica. This looked a bit cliché when I did a mockup, like a paperback you'd pick up in the checkout line at Safeway.


I also did a number of mockups involving keys, one with a skeleton that I'm glad we didn't use since I just saw it on another recent book, and a few using imagery from Michelangelo's Last Judgement. But the one that was chosen after many rounds of reworking was this:



The final is a hardcover, with the title and author name embossed on the dust-jacket. The cloud imagery has a double meaning once you read the book. You can see a website I helped set up for it here.