Last year I had the great honor of redesigning the outer sleeves for Last Gasp’s 2016 Kickstarter campaign edition of Keiji Nakazawa’s “Barefoot Gen”. The first four volumes were released in hardcover form to backers, and donated to libraries and schools. Over time, the softcover versions of all ten volumes will be replaced by new editions with my designs. Click here or the above preview to see the sleeves larger and in detail.
For these covers, I scanned-in many interesting and emotional panels from my copies of the 1985 run of the Japanese edition. My books are old and weathered, and I decided to retain that for the images in my final design(hence the back cover of volume 3 having some damage, for example.) For the logo, I made that in sumi ink with a large brush.
I’m very proud of these designs, and very much enjoyed seeing the hardcovers in print, and am looking forward to seeing the softcover editions when they are in print. Barefoot Gen is an extremely important and historic work of art, and I’m happy I got to take part in its new print run.