7. ELYSIA CHUH DESIGN
“The Damp Chamber was like a breath of fresh air for me,” says ElysiaChuh, who didn’t have to sell her client on the gust of graveyard mist in-jected into this design. In collaboration with the author, Frank Chigas, she designed the book inside and out, using spooky illustrations done by Chigas himself.

“Since this was Medusa Press’ debut title, they needed a dis-tinct look,” Chuh says, “something that would define them as a serious, high-quality, and highly creative publisher of genre books. I felt that hand-treating the title would give the cover an immedi-ate read of vintage horror and suspense novels.” She was very much influenced by the work of Saul Bass, especially his Alfred Hitch-cock movie posters. With a writing style in keeping with the great supernaturalist literature of H.P. Lovecraft and Ambrose Bierce, Chigas wanted to pay homage to the dime-store pulp mysteries of the ’40s and ’50s, when cover art was done by hand, using sensa-tional graphics to make them leap from the shelves.

“Elysia kept it simple, classy, and refined while retaining the more lurid elements needed for a collection of supernatural tales,” Chigas says. He especially likes what she did with the last page, adding, “It’s a nice touch; one final creepy image before saying farewell to the reader!” Romy Ashby