Designer Chris Tompkins cycles through travel imagery and film-noir tropes to create the look and feel of Mark Anthony Jarman’s story collection Knife Party at the Hotel Europa (Goose Lane Editions)

1. Before getting too far into the design, I sat down with the author to discuss his vision for the cover. He brought along several examples of covers and offered many great concepts for the direction he would like to see this cover take. The theme of most of these ideas was travel. There were many visuals that had potential – hotel keys, vintage luggage, luggage tags, Vespa scooters, matchbooks. By the end of our conversation, vintage luggage seemed like the clear winner, so I started off that way.