Dana Collins

Feral House Publishing: Cover and sample pages from the interior for the Feral House Title, Gates of Janus. The cover was created with a 2b pencil on low-grade, copy machine paper stock.nter Your Description Here

Feral House Publishing: Demons in the Age of Light is a memoir by Whitney Robinson. During her early 20s, she fell into the abyss of mental illness. She talks of how she battled with and expelled the “demons” of schizophrenia through alternative means. The “twin” demon image wraps from the front to the back cover, motivating the prospective book buyer to physically pick up the book and flip it over to see the complete image. I built the demons out of tape, aluminum, paper … etc. … and photographed them. The lettering was done with ballpoint pen.

Feral House Publishing: Cholo Style is my first book design. I always loved the idea of doing book covers and was excited that the time had finally arrived. Like many projects, a lack of resources had to be dealt with by sheer wits. I didn’t want my first book design to be a mishmash of provided snapshots. A trip to the surplus store and a $12 flannel shirt later, we had ourselves a striking cover that spoke with authenticity to the culture this book portrayed.

Feral House Publishing Cover and sample pages from the interior for the Feral House Title, Why Hope? John Zerzan really makes a compelling and optimistic argument for “Green Anarchism,” and paints quite a dystopian picture of how things will be if we continue on the path we are on now. The cover asks Why Hope? and the interior answers this question; the cover was dystopian the interior, utopian.

Feral House Publishing: I love old etchings and vintage medical illustrations. Using this fine stuff has pulled my backside out of the fire too many times to mention. We had no time, and the pressmen were tapping their feet loudly. Vintage medical clip art to the rescue! The rays were printed with gold metallic ink.

Feral House Publishing: To have the honor of designing Jack Black’s You Can’t Win was a huge thrill for me. It is one of my favorite books, a truly underrated American classic. In my opinion, this book should be mandatory reading at every high school throughout the nation. When we decided to use Joe Coleman’s portrait of Jack Black on the cover, it just couldn’t be beat.

designSimple A media kit cover for American Public Works Association and their institutional magazine. The idea of infrastructure, civic planning and urban management are explored by way of abstraction and typography.

Rose Scharlin: Posters for Rose Scharlins' annual Halloween Hullabaloo celebration. The posters and post cards where designed with functional cut out masks. They where printed as "short runs" giving the variety of more than one design.

Rose Scharlin: It is a bit of a balance doing work for the Rose Scharlin Co-Operative Nursery School. The design needs to be kid-friendly, but it also needs to attract the parents. The Silver Lake/Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles is the stomping ground of (possibly) the most boho-trend-loving parents on Earth. Making sure you are speaking the language of the children and their discerning hip parents is a tight rope. I find using vintage American imagery, chopped up with a good amount of bubble-gum pop, seems to get ’em in the door.

Rose Scharlin: Researching and finding art in the public domain of children throughout American history is the most fun element of doing design for the Rose Scharlin Co-operative Nursery School. I wanted to do rubber stamps of the kid on the trike, sit around with a few other parents and directly stamp the cards, but there simply wasn’t time. I ended up doing a Xerox transfer to achieve the look I wanted, and prepped it for press.