The Colony

Book cover design and illustration for Audrey Magee's 2022 novel, The Colony, published by Faber & Faber.

The cover evokes a sense of distance and isolation, as the novel takes place on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. To achieve this, the illustration plays with the viewer's sense of perception; the island is in fact a photograph of a small stone, while the textured sea was created by large brushstrokes before being photographed and scaled down.

The illustration wraps around the spine and back and at one point breaks into brushstrokes that are not online crashing waves. Elsewhere, the star horizon is echoed to once again give a sense of sparseness.