Chronicles of Vladimir Tod series
YA fantasy fiction • Penguin Young Readers
My role 🛠️
Senior Designer
Branding
What was special 💎
The movie poster concept I came up with meant putting the title on the back! I wanted the stark high-contrast art to dominate the space, but there was just too much type — very long series title, very long book title, author. So I managed, somehow, to convince my Creative Director to put the book’s title and author placed on the back cover, albeit in huge letters. The book looked like nothing else on the shelves at the time.
True story — I designed the entire cover (including vampire smiley logo) in 30 minutes at the eleventh hour in Adobe Illustrator in a cold sweat after the original [admittedly not-great] cover was summarily executed (basically) by the sales team. Desperation drove inspiration as no one wanted the dreaded “Cover Art TK” cover in the catalog.
Results 🎉
Original one-off book became a New York Times bestselling 5-book series
The series was spun off into a second 5-book “Slayer” series
Vampire smiley logo I designed — later renamed “Fang” — became basis for a merchandising campaign
