DUNE:
Creative Direction Concept Art
Key Art
Book Jacket Art
Poster Art
Vinyl Jacket Art
Typography
AN HOMAGE TO THE BOOKS & FILMS THAT FORMED ME.
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
EXPANDED DUNE PROPERTY
GREAT AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHERS
It could be said that David Lynch went too far in his 1984 rendering of Dune, but it could just as easily be said that Denis Villeneuve's palatable PG–13 rendering didn't go far enough. Is there a space in–between Jordowsky's fever-dream, Lynch's magical realism, and Villeneuve's austere pop? What could an expanded Dune property look like? And, how can it be bolstered by typography?
Frank Herbert's Complete Saga
DUNE: 1965
DUNE MESSIAH: 1969
CHILDREN OF DUNE: 1976
GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE: 1981
HERETICS OF DUNE: 1984
CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE: 1985
The Dune Sketchbook:
Music from the Soundtrack 2XLP
Something about the record design…
CONCEPT ART
Say something about the stuff above.
ENVIRONS & MATERIALS
The Spice Melange was a naturally-produced awareness spectrum narcotic that formed a fundamental block of commerce and technological development in the known universe for millennia.
Elacca wood was a plant native to the planet Ecaz. It was a blood–grained wood that could be burned to gain the narcotic, the Elacca Drug.
Fogwood is a native plant growth of the planet Ecaz. It was capable of being shaped by the power of human thought.
Arrakeen Light
Something here.
Chakobsa Bold
Something here.
DUNE AS TYPE
MARKETING VS. TYPOGRAPHY
The problem with the new Dune title card is simple: it leans on rendered effects. This works well for a one–off, but not a franchise that the entire Dune collection could be.
Think of the highly recognizable type treatment for Star Wars — the letter–forms can stretch over any new IP Disney dreams up. While the uniformity of the 4-repeated, hyper–minimalist "C" shapes is true to Villeneuve's final film, the audiences' design literacy has its limits.
I've tied to honor a similarly minimal sensibility while building out a complete, custom typeface: "Arakeen"— to cover all 6 novels, and any other future deliverables. The letters are still thin and uniform, but more nuanced, more expressive, a little more "fanatical", as the story demands.
On the furthest end of the spectrum, I've added a second iteration: "Chakobsa" — a modernized Sanskrit / Braille, representative of both the Atreides' silent battle sign language, and the desert world that imposes itself on the entire universe.
SUMMATION
Credits:
Frank Herbert
Ash Thorp Neri Oxman MIT Labs ThermoFisher Scientific
J Henry Fair for TIME
NASA
Half Face Blades ?
As goofy as it seems now, David Lynch's Dune had a huge impact on my earliest aesthetics. The weird movie nobody liked primed my adolescent brain, and brought me to the novels as a teen.
In many ways, I can trace my entire career back to those 6 books. I imagined far off worlds and their people, millennia in the future – a time long after technology, the body and mind reasserting themselves as instruments to be honed for survival's sake.
37 years after the first awkward attempt at filming the "unfilmable", we got a triumph from a director on a cinematic streak...and that makes me feel weird.
Denis Villeneuve pulled off the impossible by making a rich, idiosyncratic novel into an easy film with mass appeal. Rattled by Bladerunner 2049's mixed reception, he set out to make Dune into PG–13 pop–art, and this gambit brought more people to the book than ever before.
By proving Dune a success, Villeneuve opened the door to new interpretations of the material: something that isn't just a novel, but a place, an ecosystem, an economy – a feeling.
Dune is about taking your rightful place in the universe, even among its dwarfing complexities and stunning corruptions: its appetite to consume your body and soul as fuel for machinery beyond your conception. It's no coincidence that 2021 saw the revival of Dune.
We needed it. We need high–stakes stories of mortal peril, dear sacrifices, and triumph over overwhelming forces. I'm grateful for a third phase in my experience with this work, and moved to add my humble voice to whatever is next.