I was tasked with designing the cover to a financial help book titled "Swing the Hammer" by Brian Parker Sullivan, CEO of the company Fiscal Dynamics. I also created the illustrations used in the book. This process involved meeting with the author on several occasions to discuss the specifics of what he needed. For the cover, we worked off of a concept cover he had made previously and we expanded upon it tremendously and tied in a touch of Fiscal Dynamics branding.

When working on the illustrations, he had a list of different sections of the book he wanted illustrated. Rather than him tell me what he wanted each picture to depict, I listened as he walked me through what each section that needed an image was about. He talked me through his metaphors and things he wanted to show, and I interpreted them accordingly. This process allowed me to use my own creative instinct and decision making to design each graphic to be best suited to his needs. Ultimately he was very happy and both the cover and illustrations were used when the book was published!

I also designed and built the landing page for Swing the Hammer on the Fiscal Dynamics website, which included some custom graphics and a thoroughly designed layout to inform and entice people to purchase the book.

Please note that Mr. Sullivan and his business, Fiscal Dynamics, were a client of Krative, not CoYo Digital. I was working for Krative at the time of creation, and all work displayed was created by me.

With this project, I wanted to incorporate his already successful branding from Fiscal Dynamics loosely into the design of the book, tying them visually without being an overly corporate branded book. I wanted them to feel connected but with the ability for the book to stand on its own. The Fiscal Dynamics logo and branding consists of blue and green squares being moved around to create shapes and portray certain messages. It has always been a big part of their advertising and promotional materials, so I decided to incorporate that to the best of my ability for this book cover.

We tried building the hammer on the cover out of these shapes, we tried using a solid filled hammer with the shapes in the background, and many other options. All I knew for sure is that we wanted to incorporate Fiscal Dynamics branding, include a hammer, connect the back and front covers with a continuous graphic, and he wanted to include subtle tool graphics in the background. In the end, the solution was to illustrate the hammer using a solid fill. The hammer would be swinging into a wall of blue and green squares with dollar signs on them, sending them flying across the space. This created a dynamic front and back cover that still had space for the important information. On the back cover, I included a section dedicated to testimonials, and in this section I included the tools floating in the background. It met all of his desires in a way that is visually interesting, modern, clean, and minimalistic.