Play Dirty

Client: John Wick

Book Design and Layout

A compilation of game designer John Wick's controversial "Play Dirty" articles for Pyramid Magazine.

This was the first project I worked on for John Wick, creator of cultish games Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea. The articles have a very confrontational, abrasive attitude, in contrast with the overall polite atmosphere of professional game writing. Consequently, the book's cover is rough, unpolished and deconstructed. The center image is of a twenty-sided die, a common prop in role-playing games, with a lit fuse. (The idea for this image came from Jared Sorensen, who also recommended me to John Wick.) This cover was my first experiment with rough, spraypainted textures.