cinematic eye

Jesse Marinoff Reyes:

…collagist and photographer, Marc Yankus. He and I have collaborated on a number of assignments over the years and Yankus’s work was always the “easy part.” I knew his effort would be beautiful, and possessing of a certain literary narrative quality that would bring the book we were working on to life. Admittedly, there were many projects that were convoluted and difficult and it was really only Yankus that’d be their saving grace. But even with the requisites of a genre’s particulars front and center—no project was beyond Marc’s discerning eye and cinematic touch.

Jack Kerouac

Atop An Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings

Penguin Books, 2000
Design: Jesse Marinoff Reyes
Illustration: Marc Yankus
Art Director: Paul Buckley

Here, my favorite that we did together, Yankus was able to work with Kerouac’s actual passport photo to use in the composition. This volume collects Kerouac’s mostly pre-beat writing. I tried to reflect that with the design and direction of the illustration, shooting for more of a 1940s (a look that Yankus’s dovetails into nicely—reference the more photo-driven covers that Alvin Lustig designed for New Directions; the photos had a dream-like quality and Yankus does too!), post-war feel—and hammering-out the byline and support typography on an old, early-to-mid century typewriter.

JMR Design

The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577—1580
Penguin Books, 2004
Design: Jesse Marinoff Reyes
Illustration: Marc Yankus
Archival imagery: Bridgeman Art Library (Drake portrait: circa 1575, by Isaac Oliver; background, Galleons in the Atlantic, circa 1580s, by Danti)

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