Building a Publisher's Identity: Our Work for Pynsleade Books
Some of our favorite projects come from long relationships, not one-off jobs. Our work with Pynsleade Books, the publishing company founded by author Jacqueline Dinan, is a good example. Over the past few years we've built the Pynsleade brand and website, then designed covers for two of Jackie's books. Each one gave us a different kind of story to work with, and a lot of room to experiment.
Before there were any covers to design, there was a publishing company to define. We developed the Pynsleade Books brand identity and built pynsleadebooks.com to give Jackie's work a real home online. Jackie has been a great client to build a brand around because she's not looking for something conventional. She wants covers and a presence that feel artistic, a little unexpected, and she trusts us to bring real concepts to the table rather than something safe.
Book Cover Design: In Search of Barnabus Horton
The first book cover we designed for Pynsleade was In Search of Barnabus Horton, a deep dive into one of her own Long Island ancestors. Designer Sam Zhao developed the original cover concept. It's a project that ended up having a bigger reach than a typical local history title. Spend a little time on the Pynsleade site and you'll find no shortage of comments and discussion around the book, proof that one man's research into a single ancestor can shape how a whole community sees its own history.
Book Cover Design: The Unsettling Legacy of Wayland Jefferson
The second cover, and our most recent project with Jackie, is for The Unsettling Legacy of Wayland Jefferson, publishing Summer 2024.
Jefferson was born on the North Fork of Long Island, in Southold, to a Black mother and a white father. His mother worked as a maid for a prominent local family. He spent the 1910s and 1920s in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance before the Depression brought him back to Southold, where he became the town's official historian from 1935 until his death in 1961. His research often ran against the accepted local narrative, including material on slavery in the region, and it was backed by serious rigor. The book runs over 700 footnotes deep.
Jackie's manuscript started as an effort to set the record straight on Jefferson. As she researched, the story kept opening into something bigger, about who gets to shape collective memory and whose history gets preserved. That tension shaped the cover concept. We used actual newspaper clippings for the background of the front cover and actual quotes that we designed to look like original clippings on the back cover.
Jackie described Jefferson as a peacock, and once we saw photos of him, we understood exactly what she meant. The man had presence. So we built the cover around a full portrait of him, illustrated by Jesse Pales, whose work here was inspired by the textile-rich portraiture of Bisa Butler. We also worked in a few quiet details for anyone willing to look closer, including a Sankofa symbol on his lapel, a nod to the idea of looking back in order to move forward.
The back cover sets the scene for this book:
"Long Islanders disagree on the legacy of Wayland Jefferson, the first official historian of Southhold, New York. From 1932 to 1961, Jefferson's factual anecdotes of sex, smuggling, and slavery disrupted Southhold's traditional history and rankled a community proud of it's Puritan roots and heritage. Read his story and decide for yourself. Were his narratives bona fide or faked?"
Why This Work Matters to Us
Projects like these are why we love working with independent publishers. Jackie gives us real stories, real trust, and the freedom to build a concept rather than just fill a template. We're proud of both covers, and even prouder of the identity we've been able to build for Pynsleade Books as a whole.
Credits
Brand identity and website: Condensed
In Search of Barnabus Horton cover design: Sam Zhao
The Unsettling Legacy of Wayland Jefferson illustration: Jesse Pales
Creative direction: Brent Lagerman
Client: Pynsleade Books / Jacqueline Dinan
