Brighton based publisher Victorian Secrets hired me to design a cover for the first in their print based series of biographies of Victorian personalities. As this was to be the first time the digital based company had produced a physical product, their previous house style was ignored and I was free to create a new look and feel for this and future products. The cover (image 1) was based around a series of original photographs of Eugen Sandow (image 3) which would grace both the front and the back – a full length shot on the front and a shot of Sandow’s back on the back cover – framed with a border and intricate scroll-work. Taking inspiration from both an original advertisement for Sandow’s own spring-grip dumb-bell (image 4) and a variety of Victorian adverts for such products as medicines, tonics, tobacco and alcohol, I first sketched some border designs (image 2) then traced them into vectors and laid up the titles using the font Baron of Arizona which the client had chosen from a selection I had presented.