This project was part of my Publishing course at Simmons College. The assignment required me to choose a book published more than twenty years ago and pretend as if it were being published for the first time in 2017. We had the liberty to edit the text, choose our own illustrator, and design all aspects of the book if we so desired. Being a graphic designer myself, I took advantage of this opportunity to engage with the assignment in a deeper way and develop the book’s design in its entirety.
Even though I admire Sir Quentin Blake’s art, I decided to move away from his illustrations and chose Oliver Jeffers as the artist. Jeffers, who has a style similar to Blake, would provide readers acquainted with other works by Dahl a sense of familiarity, yet also imbue the art with a more contemporary look. At the same time, I chose to edit back the text to Dahl’s original intended ending for the book. Although a little darker, which might not have been received well at the time of its original publishing (1988). (Spoiler alert: Matilda, a naughty child with a change of heart, dies in the end.)
Enjoying this project enormously, scanned many of Jeffers’ works and photoshopped them to fit Matilda. I designed the cover, endpapers, and a couple of interiors using some the edited images. Once designed, I printed all the materials and built the actual book, pasting the endpapers to hand-made covers, which included manually-embossed stamps of a salamander and a pitcher of water, reminiscent of the iconic scene in the story.
