Lee Ford for HarperCollins
Lee Ford lent his talents to the cover of The Shetland Way: Community and Climate Crisis on my Father's Islands, a memoir and investigation exploring loss, community and the climate crisis in the Shetland Islands by environmental journalist Marianne Brown.
Lee’s unique approach to graphic image making has a strong connection to traditional print based methods and has evolved through many years of experimentation. These traditionally printed elements are combined with digital and analogue graphic processes that include found ephemera, drawing and photography all described using a playful, visceral visual language that explores both concept and aesthetic in equal measure. Lee used a combination of traditional and digital techniques to create the artwork for the wraparound cover of The Shetland Way.
About the book
When Marianne Brown arrived in Voe, Shetland, to attend the funeral of her father, she had packed enough clothes to last a short trip. But this was February 2020, just weeks before the UK’s first lockdown, and she would be unable to leave for another six months.
Shetland is a place bound together by community, history and culture. But when a huge windfarm is greenlit to export energy to mainland Scotland, it creates rifts between neighbours, friends and even families. One side supports the benefit to a planet spiralling into climate disaster; the other challenges the impact on an environment with an already struggling wildlife population.
As an environmental journalist, Marianne is drawn to investigate this story of sustainable energy that is irrevocably tied to her grief. But nothing is ever straightforward, and she soon finds herself on a transformative journey into the heart of a debate that mirrors global concerns about how we save the planet.