The Bonfire of the Vanities: final

by Tom Wolfe // Picador

Cover photograph by Jeff Spielman

• A redesign:related selection with links to original hardcover designer/illustrator Fred Marcellino.

The corporate kingdoms of New York City printed over metallized stock to make it look like a city built of tarnished gold.
I was thinking Ayn Rand by way of Donald Trump.



Tom Wolfe to be judged by his 10 reissued covers // USA TODAY



“Hats off to Henry” for those designs.
—Tom Wolfe

The Bonfire of the Vanities: sketches

I was thinking of a big bonfire.


I was thinking an Empire State Building is just an Empire State Building. But it looked more like a hypodermic needle/drug story.
And tried to use an 80s color palette inspired by Playboy pin-up / Duran Duran's RIO artist Patrick Nagel.


with Olga Grlic // Go Studio

I was thinking 1980s NYC and Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street “Master of the Universe” who has it all—a Park Avenue apartment, a job that brings wealth, power and prestige, a beautiful wife, an even more beautiful mistress as a retelling of The Fall of Icarus.






Pieter Bruegel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus c. 1558
Oil on canvas, mounted on wood, 73.5 x 112 cm
Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels

The Right Stuff: final

by Tom Wolfe // Picador
February 20 1962, Cape Canaveral, Florida. The 134-ton Atlas rocket with Astronaut John Glenn in the Mercury capsule roars from the launching pad at 9:47 AM, EST, on flight that put him into orbit just minutes later.


The Right Stuff is the latest selection for the ONE BOOK, ONE CHICAGO program for Fall 2008. This award-winning program presented by the Chicago Public Library encourages all Chicagoans to read the same book at the same time, and to come together with friends and neighbors to share and discuss a great work of literature.
What a great idea! And check out their awesome resource guide. It's chock full of great interviews, articles, historical background and timelines. Really well done.

The Right Stuff: sketches

My initial idea. A single gleaming silver star, ascending to the heavens, leaving the Earth's atmosphere and a trail of sound waves behind, just about to pierce the blackness of space to become one with the stars. Blah, blah, blah.
The gradient sky was inspired by the Japanese screen painter Ando Hiroshige.



Iconic Astronaut. I liked this idea very much. Which astronaut will be the chosen one with the "right stuff" to go to outerspace first? The silhouetted figure would've printed against a background of matte silver. In the end, I think this approach was too sexy for my cover.


The Mercury Seven: (left to right, back row) Alan Shepard, Virgil "Gus" Grissom and L. Gordon Cooper; (front row) Walter Schirra, Donald "Deke" Slayton, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter.

With Olga Grlic // Go Studio: