The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Illustrator | InDesign

OVERVIEW
The challenge was to choose an existing book and design a strictly typographic cover.

PROCESS
I chose The Alchemist, an allegorical novel by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho that was first published in 1988. The story follows a young shepherd in his journey to the pyramids of Egypt, after having recurring dreams of finding a treasure there.

Based on the story, I sketched several thumbnails to explore different ideas. I ended on a design that extends the stem of some letters up and down the cover to represent the shepherd’s destiny and personal path.

I did extensive research on typefaces and went with Ottomat, a typeface that uses basic geometric shapes, designed by Claudio Piccinini from Emigre. The geometric anatomy of this typeface was somewhat reminiscent of old texts, magic and chemistry, and since alchemy is a medieval chemical science aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold and the discovery of a means of indefinitely prolonging life, it was very fitting for the design of the cover. 

For the back cover and inner pages I chose Study, a serif typeface with calligraphic details based on a hand-drawn alphabet published in 1968 by Czech-American designer and wood engraver, Rudolph Ruzicka, which pairs nicely with the geometry of Ottomat and the overall theme of the book.

The colors chosen for the design were very intentional. The mustard-yellow represents the desert and gold, and the purple represents magic and mystery.

I also created a fictitious publishing company, Liberatus Publishing, for which I designed the logo. Liberatus comes from the Latin word līberō, which means “liberate”. The logo is an open book that can also be interpreted as a bird in flight. It’s meant to represent the liberation of our imaginations when we read books.