How to make a patch from a future world

Annalee Newitz's The Terraformers takes place on a far-future earth-like planet. At least it's earth-like in its atmosphere and landforms, but that's about where the similarities end. There are talking moose and flying sentient trains, a giant volano with a city inside and, holding it all together, the Environmental Rescue Team.

Annalee approached me to make a patch for a giveaway at New York Comicon that would capture the otherworldly nature of the book while also feeling of the book. Not just a promo patch with a standard reprint of the book cover, but instead a real patch that might be worn by the ERT. That meant getting to undestand the themes, iconography, geography, and concept behind the book.

With a turnaround timed to be ready for NYCC, there wasn't time to read the entire book, so Annalee and I sat down to talk through the world they'd created. After a few followup emails, it was time to get working.

Three early sketches for the Terraformers patch.

How do you incorporate a moose, a volcano, a flying train and a fair amount of text onto something that eventually needs to end up embroidered with a limited color pallate? A lot of sketches and, later, color tests. Working by hand at first allowed us to move quicky through ideas until we arrived at something that Annalee was happy with.

After we arrived at the basics, then I contacted manufacturers to get price quotes and turnaround times and to fine-tune the design to optimize it for their embroidery machines. Sending the artwork to multiple shops allowed us to find the best price while not having to compromise on the design too completely (there are at least five different elements on the final patch that different manufacturers said couldn't be done).

The key was keeping as much of this out of Annalee's hair as possible. Other than approving the original direction and helping to finalize the pre-production design, I kept the process out of their hair, so they could concentrate on other aspects of the book launch. Making things easy for the author and awesome for the readers is exactly how I want every project to go.