For those who love movies and pastiche, Matt Stevens combines them into typesetting covers of well-known and lesser-acknowledged films.
Now, the traditional sequence of events usually goes like this: An tragedian writes a book, a producer buys the mucosa rights to it, and a director transforms the narrative into moving images; if the mucosa was born of a screenplay, it is then sometimes well-timed by an tragedian into a novel. Matt Stevens turns the whole process upside down. These are not all books made into films, but films made original as imagined books. It’s an interesting twist—and here we talk well-nigh Stevens’ work and inspirations.
What prompted this project?
I work with a vendee who is a longtime collaborator on a lot of variegated types of work. He owns a production visitor tabbed Mortal Media and I am asked to do a lot of pitches that rise whilom the noise of a pretty competitive landscape. Lots of people trying to get ideas made. We often tideway our pitches by trying to come up with ways to do something unexpected or out of context. One of the pitches we did was to pitch a modern story, but in the style of an old storybook. I just really enjoyed the process of doing that—the research, trying to take old designs untied and see why they worked or what I responded to. That gave me the idea to do a personal series, and it just took off from there.
In order to succeed this transformation, you had to interpret the books through the lens of multiple graphic periods, philosophy and personal styles. How did you determine what was the weightier tideway to each film/book?
It’s really a mixture of things. I’d say it’s often three components that momentum it at varying degrees, depending on the cover. The mucosa itself (and it’s perception or my feeling for it), my concept of what I want to communicate well-nigh it, and the chosen style. I alimony a running list of movies that I want to work on. My only rule is that I have to have a personal connection to it or some stratum of unhealthfulness for it. I won’t do a movie I don’t like, just considering it’s popular. I’m constantly doing research and immersing myself in old work and various styles. I alimony a Pinterest workbench of things I like and respond to. Most often it’s the concept that comes first, and I think well-nigh that concept in the context of style and the film. What weightier communicates that idea? Sometimes the style comes first. I will get an itch to try something or am particularly inspired by a piece, and I see what movie it would be fun to execute in that style. The forensics of breaking untied what I love and figuring out why I respond to it is one of my favorite things well-nigh the project. It’s moreover a unconfined exercise in various ways to generate ideas.
This work reveals a surprisingly unique sense of diamond function and stylistic fluency. What is your relationship to diamond history?
Most of my career has been working for small design/brand shops, so I’ve unchangingly needed to be worldly-wise to do lots of variegated things. When I went out on my own well-nigh 10 years ago, the intention was to pursue increasingly illustration, and I really enjoy working in lots of styles and trying new things. It keeps the work interesting and presents a unvarying challenge. Sometimes I worry that I don’t have a signature style, but stuff versatile has kept me very unfluctuating and interested in the work I do.
I unchangingly sketch digitally on the iPad and sometimes that will evolve into a finished piece in Procreate on the iPad or I will take the sketch or drawing into Illustrator if it’s increasingly towardly for vector art. I unchangingly build the type portion of the covers in Illustrator. I do the final compositing in Photoshop using found textures and scanned paper.
Are there one or two of which you’re most proud?
I think in unstipulated the ones that are my favorites are the ones that came easy. I had an idea, felt good well-nigh it and it just unchangingly felt right. A few of those are Collateral, Nope, Rango.
