The challenge
The Elephant in the Algorithm, a business book by our founder Matt Perry and Rob Cannon PhD, was already public with its original cover. Two problems:
- It needed to look new. The authors wanted a cover that people who had seen the book would notice as new, and that would still work as a phone thumbnail.
- It was out of date. The old cover carried a subtitle that the final manuscript no longer used.
What we did
- Strategy: explored two lanes at once, refreshing the existing cover or building a new one from the book’s own artwork, across 11+ directions.
- Design system: built the cover from the book’s title illustration, the elephant inside an AI chip. The elephant is one shape, adapted from the original cover, so the cover and the pages speak one visual language.
- Impact at small sizes: chose a bold orange ground, a white title and a black chip, the loudest option at thumbnail size. The chip crops square for a social avatar, and small type is set at 5.1:1 contrast.
- Copy and type: set every line verbatim from the manuscript’s title page, with a short endorsement at the top, and set the type by hand in code: kerning, hanging punctuation and clean line breaks.
- Delivery: produced two finals and a source file with 18 named layers for the publisher’s print team.
The result
- Speed: from brief to final cover in 2 days.
- Accuracy: the cover now matches the final manuscript, word for word.
- Ready to hand over: layered print source files were prepared for the publisher alongside the finals.
An AI design agent drew every version in code. We set the direction, narrowed the shortlist and made every type and copy call. The book does not have a public launch date yet.
What this means for you
If your brand, product or offer needs to look new without losing what people already recognize, a Fast Start gets the refresh designed and live within two weeks. A Program carries the same system across your website, campaigns and everything else you put out.
Under the hood
- Client
- The Elephant in the Algorithm, Business book by Matt Perry, our founder, and Rob Cannon PhD
- Sector
- Publishing
- Scope
- Creative direction, Cover design, Typography, Print source files
- Timeline
- Brief to final cover in two days
- Role
- Above Average: art direction, design system and typography
- Team
- A senior lead directing an AI design agent that drew every version in code
- Art
- The book's own vector figure set: one elephant shape, placed and scaled, never redrawn
- Build
- Covers drawn in code with Python image generators, rendered at double size for clean type
- Type
- Kerning, hanging punctuation and line breaks set line by line
- Output
- Two finals, plus a layered 600dpi source file, layered SVG, vector PDF and CMYK file for the publisher
- Status
- Live