Where Stephen writes about his writing and other writing things, and some other things as well.
Soul Searching on the Clarke Award 105 Eligible List
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What a fantastic thing... for Soul Searching to be on the Arthur C. Clarke Award "long list" of eligible books – 105 titles read by the judges. 📖❤️🚀
Final Cover – Stephen Embleton 2024 It was a pleasure to create the cover for Sauúti colleague Xan van Rooyen's aetherpunk novella "Waypoint Seven" being published by the newly established Mirari Press in South Africa. It gave me the opportunity to explore my digital illustrating to the extreme by incorporating my design and drawing skills – and it would not be the same if I didn't have an understanding of how physical illustrations (brushwork, pencils, paints and textures) really look. It was daunting to start – particularly wanting to deliver Xan something that did their story justice – no pressure. But with Mirari Press' Marius du Plessis having a love and understanding of design, he gave me so much free reign to play. And with each of the phases below, he encouraged and gave feedback (mostly Wow! and keep going). This is very rare with clients. And it was with this collaboration that the illustration and design blossomed over ten days. GET YOUR COPY OF ...
It was a real pleasure to be able to create something unique for a friend and Sauúti Collective colleague – Cheryl Ntumy – for her new novella coming out with Atthis Arts press: a custom display typeface and title design. Design & Typography: Stephen Embleton, Illustration: Akintoba Kalejaye Find Atthis Arts here. A latinised version of the Adinkra alphabet from Ghana (because Cheryl is Ghanaian!), it has some fantastic characteristics and a very modular form which made it a fun, yet simple, design to work on. I first focused on the letters needed for Cheryl's book cover, and then fleshed out the other characters, as well as creating a "light" version. One happy accident for the cover design was incorporating the "working" components of each letter in the design itself. i.e. when I work on fonts, I find the common weights (stroke thicknesses) and common shapes, and move these around to exact positions. And by making them separate bright colours enables m...