Kibo

A full jacket design for Dionisio Araújo Vélez's novel — Kilimanjaro rendered as a golden-hour threshold between the cradle of humanity and its restless present, for Arango Editores' Biblioteca de Hermes collection.

Kibo is the cover design for Dionisio Araújo Vélez's novel, published by Arango Editores within its Biblioteca de Hermes collection. The story follows a journalist's journey into East Africa toward an anthropological discovery beneath Kilimanjaro — the mountain the book takes its name from, Kibo being the Swahili name for its snow-capped summit. The jacket wraps a full-bleed illustration of the peak at golden hour around spine and back cover, anchored by a gold-leaf sun disc, with leopard and hippo silhouettes and flame trees carrying the reader into the landscape before a single word is read.

The Brief

The brief was to design the complete jacket — front, spine, and back cover — for Kibo, a novel by Dionisio Araújo Vélez, as part of Arango Editores' Biblioteca de Hermes collection. The story opens with a New York journalist arriving in East Africa and follows her toward an anthropological discovery in the shadow of Kilimanjaro. The cover needed to carry that sense of arrival at somewhere ancient and immense, while sitting cleanly inside the collection's shared visual system.

Kibo, the Mountain

Research returned to the title itself: Kibo is the Swahili name for Kilimanjaro's highest, snow-capped volcanic cone — the summit that gives the novel its name. That became the visual key for the whole cover: not an illustration of a scene from the book, but a portrait of the mountain it's named after, framed by the wildlife and flame trees of the surrounding savanna.

A Golden-Hour Composition

A full-bleed illustration wraps spine to edge: a gold-leaf-textured sun disc anchors the composition directly behind Kibo's snow cap, with a leopard in the foreground, a hippo in the middle distance, and twin flame trees framing the scene in red. The bold title lockup sits directly over the gold disc, using the brightest value in the illustration to hold legibility without a text panel breaking up the artwork.

Jacket & Collection Identity

The back cover holds a critical blurb over black ground, a synopsis, and the ISBN block beneath the Biblioteca de Hermes wing crest — the emblem shared across the collection. The spine carries the title, author, and the Arango Editores mark in the collection's signature orange, the color that lets Kibo read as part of a series on a shelf while its cover art keeps it unmistakably its own.

Outcome

The result is a jacket designed to work at every distance a bookstore shelf demands: the gold disc and snow-capped peak read instantly from across the room, while the leopard, hippo, and flame trees reward a closer look. Published by Arango Editores in the Biblioteca de Hermes collection.