Matthew Revert - Designer
A graphic designer with a passion for book design. Over 600 cover credits with clients including Jeff VanderMeer. Let me dress your book!
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Overview
I am a Graphic Designer with over 600 book designs to my name covering myriad genres and styles. With over 10 years’ experience, I have had the opportunity to work with countless presses and authors who have enabled me to develop a singular design style that has proven to get books noticed in a very crowded marketplace. Clients I have worked with include Dzanc Books, Jeff VanderMeer, Lazy Fascist Press, Clash Books, Kingshot Books, Wordhorde Press, Grindhouse Press, Restless Books, Orciny Press, Sinister Grin, Maudlin House, Eraserhead Press and Broken River Books (among many others).
I look upon the opportunity to give a book clothes to wear as a great privilege. When I am asked to design a cover for a book, I feel like a guardian caring for a child to help prepare it for the world. While I always consider the commercial necessity of a cover as a vehicle to drive interest and sales, I also look upon each cover as a canvas in which to produce a piece of art that speaks only for the book it represents. My aim is never geared toward producing a cover that disappears on shelf while merely ticking the right boxes in accordance with the market. My aim is to break through and create a graphic talking point that speaks not only to the market it is aimed at, but beyond. I want a fan of romance fiction to stare at the cover of your horror book and feel compelled to read it. I want to give you a cover that continues to speak to people long after graphic trends associated with your genre have shifted. If this is something you also want, I would love to hear from you.
While my focus is on designing a book’s exterior, I also have significant experience as a typesetter and love the challenge presented by complex book interior needs. Please keep this in mind when approaching me about a cover design. I may be able to help the design of your book’s interior sing in a way you didn’t expect.
Please get in touch. I am happy and excited to talk to you about any project you have in mind and can help guide you through whatever you may need.
Services
Languages
English
Fiction
Action & Adventure
Anthologies
Horror
Literary Fiction
Mystery & Crime
Poetry
Science Fiction
Work experience
Graphic designer with a focus on book covers and interiors
Self-employed
August, 2008
–
Present
(about 13 years)
Starting in 2008 while helping co-operate the now defunct Australia small press LegumeMan Books, my professional focus shifted toward the graphic design of book covers. While I have been and am currently the ongoing head designer for several presses (including Dzanc Books, Clash Books and Kingshot Press to name a few), this has all occurred within the purview of my own freelance business. The best freelance clients become ongoing clients and I have been deeply enriched and have greatly developed my skills by virtue of these ongoing relationships. The opportunity to work with new clients on new projects continues to excite me. Over the past ten years, my design business has bloomed in a way I could have never anticipated.
Portfolio (15 selected works)
How to Set Yourself on Fire
Julia Dixon Evans
"It’s not romantic," Torrey says. "It’s physics. For every letter there is an equal and opposite, you know…letter."Sheila’s life is built of little thievings. Adrift in her mid-thirties, she sleeps in fragments, ditches her temp jobs, eavesdrops on her neighbor’s Skype calls, and keeps a stolen letter in her nightstand, penned by a UPS driver she barely knows. Her mother is stifling and her fa... read more
The Snow Collectors
Tina May Hall
Haunted by the loss of her parents and twin sister at sea, Henna cloisters herself in a Northeastern village where the snow never stops. When she discovers the body of a young woman at the edge of the forest, she’s plunged into the mystery of a centuries-old letter regarding one of the most famous stories of Arctic exploration―the Franklin expedition, which disappeared into the ice in 1845. At... read more
White Dancing Elephants
Chaya Bhuvaneswar
Best Books of 2018 Kirkus Reviews (debut and short fiction categories) Best Books of 2018, Entropy Magazine A Book Club selection for The Wing, Rebel Women's Lit and Bookish.com 35 over 35 Debut Fiction Award Finalist for the 2019 PEN American Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection "Chaya Bhuvaneswar's debut collection maps with great assurance the intricate outer reaches of the... read more
A Girl Goes Into the Forest
Peg Alford Pursell
Following her acclaimed debut, Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow, award-winning author Peg Alford Pursell explores and illuminates love and loss in 78 hybrid stories and fables. A Girl Goes into the Forest immerses readers in the complex desires, contradictions, and sorrows of daughters, wives, and husbands, artists, siblings, and mothers.In forests literal and metaphorical, the characters t... read more
Homesick: Stories
Nino Cipri
Dark, irreverent, and truly innovative, the speculative stories in Homesick meditate on the theme of home and our estrangement from it, and what happens when the familiar suddenly shifts into the uncanny. In stories that foreground queer relationships and transgender or nonbinary characters, Cipri delivers the origin story for a superhero team comprised of murdered girls; a housecleaner discov... read more
Bloomland
John Englehardt
Winner of the Dzanc Books Prize for FictionAn Indies Introduce pickA September Indie Next pick"Hugely important, hauntingly brutal―Englehardt has just announced himself as one of America’s most talented emerging writers." ―Kirkus starred reviewBloomland opens during finals week at a fictional southern university, when a student walks into the library with his roommate’s semi-automatic rifle an... read more
My Red Heaven
Lance Olsen
Set on a single day in 1927, My Red Heaven imagines a host of characters―some historic, some invented―crossing paths on the streets of Berlin. The subjects include Robert Musil, Otto Dix, Werner Heisenberg, Anita Berber, Vladimir Nabokov, Käthe Kollwitz, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Rosa Luxemburg―as well as others history has forgotten: a sommelier, a murderer, a prostitute, a pickpocket, an... read more
The Conviction of Cora Burns
Carolyn Kirby
"Kirby writes with skill and gusto." --The TimesBirmingham, England, 1885:Cora Burns has always struggled to control the violence inside of her. Does this temperament come from the mother she never knew, a convict who gave birth to her in jail? Or is Cora a product of her harsh upbringing in the workhouse, where her only light was a girl named Alice Salt, so like Cora that they were almost sis... read more
Darkansas: A Novel
Jarret Middleton
A Powell’s Top Five Staff Pick of 2017 A Library Journal Top Fall Indie Fiction Pick The Nervous Breakdown Book Club Official Selection November 2017 A Spinetingler Magazine Best Books of 2017 A Barnes & Noble Recommended Read A Chicago Review of Books Recommended Read A Volume 1 Brooklyn Recommended Read A Book Riot Recommended Read Jordan is a country musician living in the shadow of his fat... read more
Animals Eat Each Other: A Novel
Elle Nash
"Nash writes with psychological precision, capturing Lilith’s volatile shifts between directionless frustration, self-destructiveness, ambivalence, and vulnerable need. A complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) In this stunning and powerful debut, a girl with no name embarks on a fraught three-way relationship with Matt, a Satanist and a ta... read more
Hexis
Charlene Elsby
I'm not relentless. "Relentless" makes it sound like there's something called "relent" and that I'm lacking it. In that sense, I'm not relentless, but perhaps I'm unrelenting. I could relent if I wanted to. But he always has to die. I mean "always" in two senses: at all times and all of the time. I can't kill him all of the time. That would take too long. But all of the times I did, I did. I'd... read more
Jah Hills
Unathi Slasha
Jah Hills is alone in the Kwafindoda bush, waiting for the elders to come, burn ibhuma and deliver him home when he is tricked, captured and turned into isithunzela. A creature trapped in a wardrobe by day and only freed at night, to move between the realm of the living and the dead. One night, he narrowly escapes and finds his way back. But home is no longer home. Set between Kwafindoda, wher... read more
Girl Like a Bomb
Autumn Christian
Autumn Christian's third novel is a dark journey of self-discovery. An existential labyrinth of love, sex, and self-actualization where the only way out is through.When high schooler Beverly Sykes finally has sex, her whole life changes. She feels an explosion inside of her that feels like her DNA is being rearranged, and she discovers a strange power within. After chasing that transcendent fe... read more
Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey & Sylvia Plath
Lisa Marie Basile, Gabino Iglesias
Archetypes are real. Muses are real. Writers are the channels of these spirits & if that sounds like witchcraft that's because it is. These stories gave me chills. Sylvia Plath & Lana Del Rey course through the veins of these dark, sexy, mind-bending, fantastical, romantic, & haunting tales. Authors from different genres came together in their love & passion for these muses. The Blacklist: Kat... read more
Laughter of a Scoundrel
Nicholas Goroff
We're Not Doomed Yet...Laughter of a ScoundrelThis book is that laughter. You, dear reader are to be that scoundrel. Howling mercilessly at a culture that has lost itself to grift, hysteria and charlatanry; it is a humble, yet crumbling hope to call for, if nothing else, a pause and moment to breathe. In a world demanding and insisting that all within it move mindlessly at light speed, it requ... read more
Matthew has 32 reviews
Professionalism
Professionalism
Quality
Quality
Value
Value
Communication & Punctuality
Communication & Punctuality
After I designed the cover for my poetry book, I needed help to format it and fixing a few things. Matthew was very helpful and offered suggestions to improve the look of the book cover. After making some adjustments, he showed me a much better option for my cover that exceeded my expectations. Thank you so much, Matthew!
Jessica D. Vega, September 2021
I’ve worked with Mat on two books. I could comment on his professionalism, technical abilities, and insights, but what sets Mat apart is his attitude. In the self publishing ecosystem you end up working with people and organizations with varying degrees of success. Most of my experiences are highly transactional. But Mat understands that when you enter into a collaboration with an author they e...
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Steven Brennan, September 2021
Just look at my book the Calibalution Endless Waltz and you will see the craftsmanship he is phenomenal
Scaliba Taylor, August 2021
Matthew is awesome he made my book into best seller quality I have no hesitation in recommending him to anyone on any type of project
Scaliba Taylor, August 2021
Matthew has been amazing to work with. He's incredibly talented, patient, and with you every step of the way, even after the project is over. I cannot wait to work with Matthew again in the future.
Scott Hale, July 2021
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