CLIENT: Hebrew Union College Press, Academic Press
YEAR: 2020

Conceptualized, illustrated, and designed book cover

BRIEF: The Brief for this poetry book was succinct. I got the freedom to develop my own ideas and concepts about the design of this book.

My research involved a journey through the story of a life filled with strokes of ill fate. I created the book cover illustration based on reading the poems and some of the poet’s interviews. The illustration borrows imagery from his life, poems, and the house where he lived. The lettering is simple with the intention to support the focal point of the cover: The cypress trees in the sunshine.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: Late in 2013, preeminent Hebrew poet Tuvia Ruebner published his fifteenth poetry collection titled Last Ones. But it was not his last; he continued writing and publishing, even into the summer of his death in 2019. The translated poems in Now at the Threshold: The Late Poems of Tuvia Ruebner are from Ruebner’s final three collections, poems all written from 2014 onward, after the poet’s 90th birthday. Translated into English by award-winning translator Rachel Tzvia Back, these late and last poems both celebrate life’s enduring small graces and converse quietly—even negotiate—with death. With love and loss ever intertwined, and a protesting voice still fierce, this collection offers the reader illuminating and beautiful poetry from a great humanist and a great poet.

Tools used: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Indesign