Santa Barbara Botanic Garden | Field Guide Publication
A Flora of Santa Catalina Island is a field guide written in partnership with the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and the Catalina Island Conservancy. Set to publish in 2025, this comprehensive guidebook navigates the island’s biodiversity, offering essential insights and captivating imagery for explorers and conservationists alike.
Cover Designer
Media: Print
Beyond the Cover:
A Peek into the Inside Story
This project began with a single ask: to design the field guide’s cover. Yet, inspired by the essence of Santa Catalina Island, my concept evolved into something more profound—a captivating ‘peekaboo’ effect through the title type. As the book opens, this design transforms, revealing a stunning panoramic landscape across the end pages, showcasing the island’s coastal splendor in its entirety.
Explorations
I presented a series of cover concepts that explored different visual approaches to representing the island’s botanical richness and dramatic landscape. The iterations ranged from bold typographic treatments layered over sweeping coastal vistas to image-driven compositions highlighting endemic blooms. Each concept examined the balance between scientific authority and natural beauty, testing color palettes, photography, scale, and hierarchy to arrive at a cover that felt both timeless and rooted in place.
