Freakonomics

The project has been designed in response to the Penguin Design Awards brief in 2015 in the non-fiction book cover category. During the concept development of the Freakonomics book cover the main focus revolved around the subtitle of the book—the hidden side of everything. This led to the notion of optical illusions and the fact that they are not what they seem at first sight. The intention was to develop a set of “impossible shapes”, which only work in 2D space and could never exist in reality. Taking it a step further I created a set of glyphs constructed as “impossible shapes” and used them to set the title. The same treatment is applied as a decorative element to the borders of the back side of the cover.