Book design for Nick Cave's ‘The Sick Bag Song’. Trade, hardcover & limited editions.

The Sick Bag Song chronicles Nick Cave's 2014 tour of North America with his band, The Bad Seeds. The account of this 22-city journey began life scribbled on airline sick bags and grew into a restless full-length epic, seeking out the roots of inspiration, love and meaning.

The book’s pared-back aesthetic takes inspiration from the object itself: the pristine and functional sick bag. This simplicity creates a cover that is both sterile and tactile. Contained within a navy clamshell box, the cover design replicates a sick bag (front and back), set within a debossed outline. The look and feel of the packaging echoes the easy elegance of corporate America - a polite contrast to the visceral writing within.

The Sick Bag Song is arranged in the same order as Cave’s tour, beginning in Nashville and ending in Montreal. Each destination is introduced by a replicated image of the city’s corresponding sick bag - covered in images, sketches and observations by Cave.

A smaller, trade (softcover) edition of the book was released later the same year and was designed to compliment the clean hardcover aesthetic.

The Limited Edition of 220 (x10 for each city featured on the tour), expanded on the hardcover design and included a unique sick bag in a presentation wallet, signed and personally customised by Nick with notes, doodles and musings; a signed and numbered special edition of the book; and a limited pressing of Nick Cave reading the book produced on a white vinyl double LP. The fully assembled edition was designed to look like the back of an airline seat, with trey-table and magazine rack.