The Project

Ivanhoe tasked me with trying to figure out how to represent heaven for his new book. It wasn’t exactly easy. Besides the traditional depictions of heaven being clouds and golden bridges and pearly gates, I wasn’t sure how to best represent it. What is heaven? Though this book explores it, I had to do some of my own inner exploring and research. I finally settled on the vast sky and wonder of space. What’s out there beyond us? I sent Ivanhoe a few different mockups with space and feelings of smallness.

But something kept pulling me toward the traditional concepts of heaven. I wanted to try to merge this more science-based depiction with the traditional. I found an image of a tunnel that, for reasons beyond me, reminded me of a warp gate or the special effects a science fiction movie would use for warp speed. I pieced it together with an overlay of clouds, added more light effects, and for added measure to make sure we were definitely talking about heaven, I added in a stream of light that started from the center of this focal piece of sky.

Ivanhoe loved it. With our main visual component of the book complete, the rest of the design process went smoothly without any hiccups.