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
Fiction
Action & Adventure
Anthologies
Horror
Literary Fiction
Mystery & Crime
Poetry
Science Fiction
Languages
English
Work experience
Self-employed
Aug, 2008 —
Present
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
"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 neighbo... read more
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 no... read more
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, fantasti... read more
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... read more
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 ... read more
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 sens... read more
"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 rev... read more
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 Recomme... read more
"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 pr... read more
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, Ludwi... read more
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 ... read more
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 tran... read more
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, contradicti... read more
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 P... read more
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 l... read more
Matthew has 46 reviews
Professionalism
Quality
Value
Responsiveness
Dietrich S.
Sep, 2023
Jayke L.
Nov, 2022
Ryan K.
Oct, 2022
Proto D.
Aug, 2022
Ryan M.
May, 2022
Sign up to read more reviews
Create a free Reedsy account to connect with Matthew and thousands of other publishing professionals on Reedsy.
