Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” is a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan about Khan’s expanding empire that is in the form of prose poems. Each story is a very imaginative yet symbolic and calculated explanation about a specific city. There are 55 cities that are described in detail that defy the laws of physics but show how cities can conceptually relate to human nature. The idea behind this cover was to create an imaginative, surreal and constructed world that represented the worlds that Marco Polo was describing.

The next idea was to create a poetic, layered story within the illustration that addressed the different narratives and sub-narrative that exist in the book. Thus, there are references to the theme of mazes, obstacles, illusions, psychology and the power that words have in creating vivid imagery.