Fingerprint Book

Last year my friend Dan Richardson asked me to illustrate his poem and to help him make it into a book. The book is a poem Dan wrote to his son about the difficulty and beauty of finding your way in this world.  After reading the poem and discussing it with Dan I played around with different ways to illustrate the ideas in the poem.  Normally I present all sorts of options, but this time I fell in love with the first illustrations I did and luckily so did Dan.  Each page has a fingerprint element that interacts with an icon (or shape) to help illustrate the poem.  Below is my favorite spread in the book where the fingerprint element has taken on the shape of the earth.

It has been a long process of learning the ups and downs of different printing companies and making lots of difficult decisions regarding book design, size, hard cover vs. soft, ISBN, pricing, ... the list could go on and on.  But through that process we both learned a lot about collaboration, persistence, and what it takes to self-publish a book.  In the end I think our efforts paid off and the book is a lovely combination of poetry and art and I am very excited that it is now available through CreateSpace and Amazon.  This is the first week it is available online so if you know anyone who might be in the market for an uplifting book with a message of encouragement and hope, please help us spread the word!