Description: A young Jewish pianist at Auschwitz, desperate to save her family, is chosen to play at the camp commandant's house. How could she know she would fall in love with the wrong boy?
He is a Senior Book Designer at Candlewick Press (YA/Children's books) who focuses primarily on designing young adult and middle grade books and prides himself on helping those books stand out. For his genre, his designs seem intelligent and well thought out - yet still appeal to the YA troupes we are used to seeing.
In an interview, he talked about what got him into design and credits Chip Kidd's Jurassic Park cover design for grabbing him as a kid. Having been the first "grown-up novel" he had ever read (after being obsessed with the movie as a child), he talks about his love of the branding - the movie, shirts, theme park elements, lunch boxes, toys, etc. - which all came from a book jacket design.
Before getting hired at Candlewick, Matt worked with creative team at Atomicdust, a branding and marketing agency in St. Louis, Missouri. He says it was an important part of his career, as he learned the ins-and-outs of the creative process while there: "Learning how to boil down a company’s entire purpose/goals/soul into a clear message was great experience for what I do now: communicating an entire book’s essence through its jacket."
I can identify with this, as my background is more in the branding-communication world, and I love the puzzle of figuring out what will move someone and why-- and now, what I love most is translating that motivation into a visual design.
Here is some more of his work:
