Book Cover Designer

For "Maut dan Cinta", we used a much tangled and tousled thread forming two people separated from each other, showing how complicated and difficult the lives of the characters in this book. Unlike what the title suggests, this book is not merely a love story, but a novel exploring what it means to be loyal to your nation, and what it takes to be true to your moral compass.

Client: Pustaka Obor

This novel is inspired by true story, about the life of a woman called Mbah Salinem. A huge part of the book revolves around a secret: her recipe of Sambel Kacang Mede, which inspired us to illustrate ingredients usually found in pecel. We decoratively used cabbage, kemangi leaves, turi, long beans, chili, cucumber, bean sprouts, and of course cashews! 

The illustration for this cover is done in Clip Studio Paint with iPad Pro. We really like working with this app to create heavily detailed illustration that needs a lot of layers. 

Client: Storial

Book cover design of Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng,, translated into Indonesian by Angelic Zaizai, edited by Mery Riansyah and published by Penerbit Spring. We were enchanted the first time we read this book. It is powerful, poignant, beautifully written. The characters are relatable - although not all are likeable, we believed in them. Like her first novel, Celeste Ng writes about human relationships and drama exceptionally well.

For this design, we do not want to stray far from the initial visual elements of the original cover. The houses, the bleak nuance, the suburban feel of this imagery fits perfectly well with the tone of the book. One of the houses is on fire, as a nod at the title, while also implying a hint of the plot. We really hope you get the chance to pick up this book.

Client: Penerbit Spring

Book cover for Wedha Sasangka: Mengenal Jati Diri Pribadi dan Bangsa, published by Penerbit Baca. This book is about one's identity as a human and as a part of society, as a part of a nation. We symbolized the idea of identity by drawing plants growing out of dry, seemingly barren, desert-like land to show that our self as a part of Nusantara will always show, will always grow, no matter how difficult. 
The illustration for this cover is done in Procreate with iPad Pro.

Client: Penerbit Baca

Book cover design for Cuaca Buruk Sebuah Buku Puisi, written by Ibe S. Palogai. As a book of poetry about the emotional cost of war, it is necessary for us to put Balla Lampoa on the cover, the traditional house from Makassar. This symbolizes the love for a home, for tradition, for independence, and for peace, for hope of a better tomorrow - even if it costs you your life, or the life of the ones you love.

Client: Gramedia Pustaka Utama

Manurung - 13 Pertanyaan untuk 3 Nama, is written by Faisal Oddang and published by Penerbit Gramedia Pustaka Utama. This book is one long poetry adapted from I La Galigo, an epic tale from Bugis, South Sulawesi, as a means to make I La Galigo more acceptable for common readers. The preserved manuscript consists of 6.000 pages, making it one of the largest works in literature, although it is believed that the available manuscript doesn't even contain the whole story. I La Galigo was originally an oral folklore about the origin of humanity, gods, and the perception of heaven and hell until a Dutch theologian and scholar B. F. Matthes requested this tale to be written in Makassar. We adapted the Lontara script as the typeface for the cover, as a homage to Bugis culture. Each illustration is drawn to represent the three worlds: “Boting Laqiq” which is heaven, represented by the sky; “Peretiwi” or land, the world we live in; and hell or “Ale Lino”, symbolized as the sea.

Client: Gramedia Pustaka Utama

Book cover for Langit, Angin, Bintang dan Puisi – Yun Dong Ju. This is a book of poetry, published by Pustaka Obor. Yun Dong Ju himself is a renowned poet from Korea, famous for his lyrical but honest words about his strive for freedom and indepence, his fear of death and the darkness of his reality, his love for nature and the life of others surrounding him, and of course, his love for his country. He sadly passed away at a very young age - only 28. His first and only anthology, Sky, Wind, Star and Poem, eventually got published three years after his death. For this cover of the Indonesian translation, we symbolized the title with very minimalistic illustrations, using the three main colors of Korean flag - red, white and blue. As a little connection to Indonesia, we drew mega mendung hovering over the sky.

Client: Pustaka Obor

Book cover for Seorang Tokoh Cerita yang Menderita, an anthology of short stories by Luigi Pirandello. This is our first time reading Pirandello's work and we must say we fell in love. His characters are multidimensional, his stories evocative and deeply realized, full of irony but relatable. We illustrate some objects we catch in his short stories to capture the sense of mundane mediocrity often expressed in his stories, but we scatter them around randomly to offer a little bit of incongruity.

Client: Penerbit Basabasi

This cover is designed to celebrate its eight reprint and third cover design. Hearing the word "soulmate", we immediately thought of cupid, so we illustrated a baby cupid with his bow and arrow shaped like WiFi waves. We used vibrant colors for a fresher look (and to be honest, we were on a Call Me By Your Name craze when we designed this cover, so we couldn't resist not using blue and yellow combination)

Client: Gramedia Pustaka Utama