The Elephant Rag

I was recently commissioned to create a logo for Terry Farish's wonderful blog/magazine about children's books with voices from around the world called The Elephant Rag. There you'll find links to book lists, interviews, talk about race, and stories about amazing people.

The logo was created in several stages. The background was built from images layered in photoshop: a photographed page from a book from Bhutan, plus scanned pages from a Mexican curandero book in Spanish from San Pablito and a book from Japan with the words to a Noh drama. All are muted so they blend together.


The elephant was drawn and the text lettered with my favorite pentel brush fountain pen. My first one was purchased from John Neal Bookseller but after a plane trip to Oregon this fall, I found that the ink flow was less controlled. I then began to use the pen I purchased while visiting Korea.

A light opacity of a scan of amate or amatyl bark paper from Mexico is laid over the entire image and an outer outline is from a scan of mashamba paper from Africa.