Title: It Can’t Happen Here
Author: Sinclair Lewis
First published: 1935
A cautionary tale that warns of the creeping danger of fascism, It Can’t Happen Here follows the story of Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip and his rise to becoming the country’s first outright dictator.
The novel follows Windrip’s demagogic ascension to power and the subsequent coup he leads upon his election, as well as documenting the eventual collapse of the country under his leadership. The story also follows the character Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor who sees Windrip’s fascist policies for what they are ahead of time and who becomes the dictator’s most ardent critic.
For the cover, I toyed with a few different executions – but one visual always stood out above the others. Like a lot of nations, the flag of the United States of America holds a special relevance in culture and gets used—and misused—for both beneficial and nefarious purposes. Showing the flag at an incorrect angle, using a stark, black-and-white colour palette and distressing the graphic helps convey the turmoil of the story itself. For the typography, I looked at the hand-rendered placards of anti-fascist movements and tried to replicate that style, where condensed block capital letterforms often maximise the space available to convey the message.
This is cover is a reimagining and not commercially available, any fonts or images used have been included as part of a personal project only.
