Dog Days by Dave Ihlenfeld (unrealized)
Dog Days. A Year in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
It was the ultimate road trip: a year-long journey in a 27-foot-long fibre glass hotdog across the US and Europe. Rife with breakdowns, meaty puns, the burdens of instant celebrity and more Wiener Whistles than anyone could ever hope for, Ihlenfeld’s uproarious recounting of his time behind the wheel is a coming-of-age story that is as irreverent as it is touching of learning about life, love and (sausage) links, ultimately arriving at the realisation that that the future is anything but a straight road.
This is one of three cover designs for Dave Ihlenfeld’s memoir shown on The Book Designers’s portfolio website (Art Director: Elizabeth Mihaltse). It looks like they are all unrealized: the actual cover looks different, and — quite understandably — makes prominent use of a photo of the incredible Wienermobile. All that’s left typographically is a few words in Gelateria, Ryoichi Tsunekawa’s script typeface inspired by Italian shopfront lettering.
The depicted design additionally uses some other rarely seen fonts: Patrick Griffin’s Fab (“Canada Type’s tribute to the Eighties”), Jeff Levine’s jolly Prankster, and Lewis Tsalis’s constructivist Tube. By the way, we can tell that this is not the approved cover from the misspelled word “Weinermobile”.
