The Martian is a thrilling sci-fi novel, published in 2011, written by Andy Weir. An American astronaut, Mark Watney, is stranded on Mars after his team is forced to abandon him during an emergency evacuation. The book cover design concept was inspired both by sci-fi book covers of the ‘60s and the clean modernity associated with futuristic space travel. The Mars landscape is illustrated with a lone astronaut heading into the distance, created as a digital imaging collage. I created this as a student at FIDM, and it remains in my portfolio as one of my favorite concepts.