Design Solutions for Storyteller Taharqa Obika

After creating the animation 'Small Ting Mentality' with my friend Taharqa's story, we decided to stick together and work on other projects. His next move was to develop a book of short poems where each piece would be done daily over a space of a few months. My mission was to create a book cover that had a Caribbean feel with a contemporary look. So I started with the cliche imagery of sun, sand and coconut trees and then worked backwards;and then it came to me one evening just playing around in illustrator with shapes and text. I eventually conceptualized a typographic design with bold colors and clean layout. A superimposed coconut tree was also incorporated into the design to give that subtle feel of Caribbeaness. The illustrations I started off with were not wasted, they were used as supporting imagery for some of the poems in the book. So everything worked out fine. As an added bonus, a DVD with some of his live performances was given free with the purchase of a book. I also did the design for that DVD and a flyer to promote the book.