HEART OF FAITH & FIRE
Client: Marsha Rhea Gordon
Year: 2024
Services: Graphic Design
Designing a book jacket for a work of historical fiction rooted in one of history's most iconic figures carries a particular kind of responsibility. Joan of Arc is not simply a character; she is a symbol, and the cover needed to honor that weight while still functioning as an object that could stop someone in a bookshop and compel them to pick it up. The brief was to create something that spoke to the turbulence of Joan's life, her unwavering devotion, and the almost mythological status she has come to occupy in the cultural imagination.
INITIAL DESIGNS
The design process began with an exploration of the iconography most closely associated with Joan: the fleur-de-lis, her white banner, the imagery of fire and faith that define her story.
ITERATIONS
Through successive rounds of refinement with the author, Marsha Rhea Gordon, the final direction emerged as the clearest and most resonant distillation of the book's themes. The chosen cover presents Joan as a white figure on a white horse, banner raised, rendered in a way that feels less like illustration and more like sculpture. The deliberate stillness and statue-like position of the figure positions her as something immortalized rather than merely depicted, larger than life in the way that history itself has made her.
FINAL VERSION
The background works in deliberate contrast to that stillness. A gradient descending from light orange at the top to a deep, burning red below evokes smoke and fire without being literal about it, suggesting the tribulations Joan endured rather than illustrating them directly. The light above the figure carries its own quiet significance, nodding to the religious devotion that drove her and the divine guidance she believed she followed. The result is a cover that operates on two levels simultaneously: as an immediate visual statement that is bold enough to command attention, and as a layered composition that rewards closer reading.
Completed within a one-week timeline, the project is currently in concept phase ahead of going to print. It represents a collaboration between design and authorship in which the visual language of the jacket and the spirit of the book arrived, through iteration and trust, at the same place.