Artwork for the novel Meatspace by Nikesh Shukla
A pair of aviator sunglasses and a red bow tie represent the character Aziz's online persona. Rendered in real meat pixels, the artwork represents how our exciting cyberspace personalities can end up consuming our boring 'meatspace' lives.
Creating a meat mosaic threw up a number of problems. I'd never worked with meat before as an artistic medium. Most of the preparation time went into meat research and establishing the palette. Getting a broad gamut of meat colours to provide contrast in the image was a challenge. A lot of meat colours tend to be in a very narrow band of pinks and reds. The hardest medium to work in is lamb's liver. It is slippery to handle, and big differences in texture and density make it difficult to cut with accuracy. It also smelt pretty bad after a few hours of handling under hot studio lights.
The resulting artwork was arranged from 818 pixels of 12 varieties of meat.
Chicken breast - cooked
Turkey breast - cooked
Lamb's liver - raw
Frying steak - raw
Frying steak - medium
Frying steak - well done
Sirloin steak - raw
Pork cutlet - raw
Black pudding - cooked
Beef burger - cooked
Pancetta
Pork pie
"This, this is next-level creative madness. I don't know how he coped surrounded by all that meat. He will always do my covers. Always." Nikesh Shukla
Some great coverage for the design:
The Independent
Design Week
Eat With Your Eyes
Role: Art director, Designer, Butcher
Creative Circle 2015 Bronze - Best Book Cover
Photographer - Phil Aylen, U-Dox Creative
Retouch - Graeme Bulcraig, Touch Digital
Author portrait - Chris Lawson