DUNE:
Creative Direction
Concept Art
Key Art
Book Jacket Art
Poster Art
Vinyl Sleeve Art
Title Drop
Typography
Frank Herbert was a night editor at the San Francisco Examiner when he wrote DUNE, the best-selling science fiction novel of all time. He lived in a small house on Mississippi Street in Potrero Hill. “By writing in the mornings, I gave my best energies to myself,” Herbert said. “The Ex got the rest.”
Like The Odyssey, DUNE is the cautionary hero’s tale, but put together with all six books, it’s actually one long story about how to get humanity to think long-term — something I think about often in my own work. Here’s some conceptual work for the books and movies that set me on my career path.
DUNE EXPANDED
It could be said that David Lynch went too far in his 1984 rendering of Dune, but did Denis Villeneuve's highly palatable PG–13 entry go far enough? Is there a space in–between Jordowsky's fever-dream, Lynch's grotesquery, and Villeneuve's Austere-Pop? What could an expanded Dune property look like? How can it be bolstered by concept art, merchandise resurfacing, and new hero 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:
Soundtrack from 2XLP, Mondo
Mondo Records is an illustrious producer of vinyl pressings of film, TV, and video game soundtracks, adorned by original art by world-renowned artists. The presentation usually comes as colored or “splatter” vinyl, and released in sought-after limited editions. In terms of quality and conductibility, Mondo is one of the most important vinyl imprint today, marrying analogue sound to hand-made art and illustration.
CONCEPT ART
Proposed book jackets and poster art for promotion, and concept design books for DUNE Parts 1 and 2. Interestingly enough, all of the alienesque textures and imagery used across this collateral comes from hazardous waste sites, and photomicrography of bacteria and parasites — all earth-bound terrors.
ENVIRONS & MATERIALS
Ecology, politics, cultures, narcotics, fashion, and materials color DUNE: The Spice Melange is a naturally-produced “awareness spectrum drug” that forms the fundamental block of commerce and technological development in the known universe. What does Melange look like? How is it processed? What other elements, instruments, environments, and characters can we explore to challenge the audiences, and move film aesthetics forward?
TITLE DROP: Arrakeen Light
The problem with Danny Yount’s title drop for Denis Villeneuve's DUNE is simple: it leans on rendered effects, and is trapped in a digital domain (where DUNE exists in a post technology era). It works for single film, but isn’t sturdy enough to support the franchise that the entire Dune collection could be.
“Arrakeen” can better accommodate IP, stretch over books, records, and other quality commemorative goods — live in the tangible, material world.
BATTLE LANGUAGE: Chakobsa Bold
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. It is the fanatical, battle-ready counterpoint to “Arakeen”.
SWIM IN STRANGE WATERS
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And, he must have a strong sense of the sardonic.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune
I’ve dedicated my life to beauty, and competing from greatness in design. Recently, I’ve come to question whether beauty in design is relevant; does aesthetic “greatness” hold value for anyone outside the “Priesthood of Design”? Or, is this a service industry?
When you peel back all the layers, the job is about servicing business. Sometimes, we get to make beautiful work, too.
SUMMATION
Credits:
Frank Herbert
David Lynch
Ash Thorp
Neri Oxman
MIT Labs
ThermoFisher Scientific
NASA
Half Face Blades
David Lynch's Dune had a huge impact on my earliest aesthetics. The bizarre 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.
Dune is about taking your rightful place in the universe, among its dwarfing complexities and stunning corruptions: its appetite to consume your life as fuel for machinery beyond your conception. But it’s also a warning: beware the Prophet. Beware charismatic leaders, hero-worship, and the allure of authoritarianism.
DUNE explores how societies often give up their autonomy and critical thinking in exchange for the promise of stability or greatness under a powerful figure. We must learn to think and plan in greater spans of time. To create “plans within plans”.