Why is the sea pink? Explaining the meaning behind my cover for "The Weird & Wonderful Surviveries of Squid Horse"

Book cover by The Mollusc Dimension

I recently shared the front cover for my forthcoming autobiographical comic book, The Weird & Wonderful Surviveries of Squid Horse out in October 2024.

I was entirely lost for quite some time as to how to approach the cover because I had spent a lot of time working deeply at the level of the stories and doing many small but important edits. I found it challenging to think about the book as as whole. Now it’s ready to be shared, I also wanted to share some of the thinking behind the cover design.

The colour palette

I selected the colours as they were similar to the trans flag. However I didn’t want to use white for my skin. Instead of using a “realistic” skin-tone, I went for a very light, slightly ghostly blue colour. My skin, t-shirt and shoes are also the same blue colour. This gives a slightly eerie feel that might communicate the story is a surreal exploration of mental health and grief.

The pink sea

I’m standing on a pink sea holding a book that seems to also have a cover with a pink sea. The colour pink has been used/reclaimed by queer people to represent queerness. A pink sea appears momentarily towards the end of my music video, Take Me Back to the Ocean. The pink sea also looks a bit like a brain and the book is about diving into my memories, thoughts and emotions. Here there is a surreal interplay between inner and outer world, as I appear to stand at the surface of my brain, yet everything in the cover is (or was) in a sense “inside my head”, while the reader is both outside the book, holding it/ viewing it, yet also for me, they are also inside it, as I am imagining them while I created it.

Joonkid 俊 傑

The character shown is based on the current version of me and is called Joonkid 俊 傑, a Chinese name my maternal grandmother gave me when I came out to her as trans-masc.

There are several versions of me in the book and I considered showing several of them. However I was struck by a few covers that showed a single figure and found this quite striking as it seems to suggest that the material is personal, intimate and that the character has faced/ faces isolating experiences.

Joonkid wears a purple beanie hat, grey trousers. Actually he appears in one of the stories inside the book and something about the story and the expression - both slightly sad (my general demeanour) and slightly confrontational/ direct made me think it would be an interesting cover choice.

The Lettering

The title lettering is a mixture of hand-designed lettering and a font I designed which is used in the book. The bold letters for “Squid Horse” are reminiscent of thick marker pen. The heart and tilted angles give the letters a youthful (?) playful feel. The wideness and fluid shapes of the lettering for my name “The Mollusc Dimension” are inspired by sci-fi fonts, esoteric art/letters and also a type of Chinese calligraphy form called seal script (but sideways!)

Updates on the book launch…

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art, comics, culture, storytelling, asian, writing, books, trans, queerculture, neurodivergent artist, LGBTIQ, ESEAThe Mollusc Dimension