PÅ VÄG FRÅN ATOCHA BOOK COVER

For a book cover course, Konstfack worked in collaboration with Natur & Kultur famous Swedish publishing house. We had to design the cover for Ben Lerner’s book «Leaving the Atocha Station». Published in 2011, « På väg från Atocha » describes the experience of a young American poet in Madrid during the terrorist attack of 2004. Although he is supposed to study the role of literature in Spanish Civil War, he spends most of his time taking drugs and observing people. The book explores the question of distance, language, and relationship. I tried to communicate these themes by overlapping 35 translations of the title. The overlapping makes the title difficult to read and therefore understand. Moreover, the visual created reminds the geography of a city as well as the crossing of the people you meet when you are a foreigner. Finally, the cover is printed on transparent paper. When holding the book, the superposition creates optical illusions similar to the drug effect the author talks about.