Rumi

I was slightly nervous when I first received the assignment. Rumi is not a subject you want to flatten into decoration. After reading the manuscript, I wrote down a set of keywords: spiral movement, light and darkness, longing, melancholy, poetry, union.

I worked mainly with spiral movement and light versus darkness, because they could be translated into something concrete. The image search led me to a poetic photograph by Reza of whirling dervishes — an image that carried both movement and a certain melancholy.

But the first version of the cover was too still. It had the subject, but not yet the sense of constant striving and circular motion that runs through Rumi’s work.

The typography fixed it. By constructing a spiral-like curl inside the title, I set the two dervishes in motion, and the cover finally began to turn. The image had the subject; the typography had to give it movement.