Intensity.

This is my first wireless posting ever, thanks to my lovely MacBook. I'm writing this from the World Room of the Graduate School of Journalism, where the Pulitzer Prizes are awarded every year, and which serves, since Friday night through this Saturday, as headquarters for the Hudson University Press ("Jerry Orbach is our dean!"). This workshop is absolutely intense, but only for everybody else; they're all dealing with numbers and math and editing press releases and stuff like that. I just design six covers, and on this, the second day of workshop, I already have two pretty much locked in. I'll try to post them later in the week when they get finalized, but let's just say, these are most definitely portfolio material.

The most beloved cover so far is the one that nobody thought I could pull off. For a book titled The Devil's Chord, I wanted to stay away from satanic imagery and instead show the devil at play. I thought it would be great also to stay away from stock photography (which sucks when pulled off the internet) and do my own. I went out and found some faux parchment paper and hand-drew this tritonal chord onto it, and after three attempts, I managed to set it on fire, get it into position where the flame starts to engulf the staff and notes with one hand, and aim the camera with my other hand to take the photo (without my fingers in the frame), all the while it started raining. With absolutely no editing to the image, it became the cover, and has met universal acclaim. My other cover, a black & white subway photo I found on the internet, has also received lots of compliments due to the (of course) selection of typeface, and the way I balanced text in the tonal areas of the image. I'm working with a couple of legends in the business, and I can't wait to get started in the morning and start researching our other titles. As Dean Orbach would say, "Kick-ass."