The only thing I had to work with this cover was a black and white photo of John Prine (country blues singer). It's hard to work with limited material like that. The first thing I did was sepia colorize the photo, then copy it to the background and shift the color channels around, then add some texture and more colorization. That's how I achieved this attractive cover design that received excellent response from the readers of Mountain Xpress.

This is another cover that started out as a black and white photograph. Ben Harper is a progressive blues singer so I found it fitting to give him a mild psychedelic look with a solarization filter and some colorization by hand. I like the playfullness where it looks like he is crooking his neck to avoid the masthead and headliner.

When I began working on this project I did not intend to create a design that resembled crop circles. But after 'playing' around with shapes in Adobe Illustrator it wasn't long before I knew I had a winner. After I got a geometric design I was satisfied with, I imported it into Adobe Photoshop and gave it some bevelling and some eerie color. It worked well to portray this book about paranormal activity.

Each summer, Mountain Xpress produces a local Dining and Summer Activities Guide. I was chosen to design the cover and work hand in hand with a professional photographer. The photo was shot in early spring, so it ended up looking like it was shot in the winter. Well, that was not the most appropriate setting for a summer release. I started by converting a good scan of a tree into an overlay to lay over the top section of the photo. This covered a good deal of the branches with missing leaves. A little photo retouching and a new sky built from scratch and this design was ready for print.

Want to see the before and after images? Click here

The essence of the strongly-divided, heated debate between Asheville City and Buncombe Cover over zoning issues (pun intended) was captured by this cover - a stark 'yin-yangish' design to represent to two sides. For an extra touch, the line betweenthe sides mimics the yellow dividing-lines on a road. Strong blacks, reds, and yellows also help convey the edge to this debate.

The city of Asheville has an unusually large chess scene - which this story was about. I chose the photo of the young boy for additional audience appeal. He was really happy to be on the cover. I also coined the header "Castling Asheville Side" (formerly being a fairly skilled chess player myself, I had a bit of personal connection to this story).

A man's house was raided by feds armed with assault rifles and assault vests because of hearsay. There was no evidence before the raid and there was no evidence after the raid. He was a simple farmer with a family... thus the imagery for this cover: the accusing Uncle Sam thinking "Marijuana!" and the innocent American Farmer thinking "Food". There was a touch of controversy over this issue, but when its for a progressive local news alternative magazine, its totally appropriate and supported by the Mountain Xpress publisher and editor.

I got to see the Tap Dogs perform in person when I lived in New York. It's a top quality, very exciting, sparks flying show... literally. They use power tools on metal for raw special effects. Unfortunately, the source slide was poor quality so I had to some serious retouching to fix the sparks and sharpen the photo. The promotional manager expressed appreciation on the local Public Radio station during an interview.

Here is yet another cover design that began with a black and white photo. The Bottle Rockets are a popular Americana rock band, so I digitally hand painted in a freshly-exploded bottle rocket to add more flair - which also appropraitely reflected their name.

This cover design was for a story about an Alienation of Affection lawsuit. That's when a spouse sues the lover of the other spouse, the unfaithful spouse. A very 'cold' situation - just like the icy colors of this design. There was a lot of negative white-space that needed filling, so I scanned the actual legal document and used it as a 'text'-ure fill.

This cover was designed for the story covering the annual New Years Eve celebration in Downtown Asheville. I provided an original photo of Pack Square (the center of Downtown Asheville) and the festival committtee supplied a photo of the First Night mascot, the jester. With a little digital magic, I conjured an explosion of confetti, cool colors, and a warm neon-like header to portray this fun-filled winter festival.