The Minimalist Entrepreneur

Background

Sahil Lavingia is a self-taught developer, tech entrepreneur and founder of the web content marketplace, Gumroad. The first employee at Pinterest, he built v1.0 of Gumroad in a single weekend after hitting a wall trying to sell an icon he designed, realizing the considerable amount of effort it took to sell an item directly to consumers. Packed with battle-tested lessons from his journey of building Gumroad, The Minimalist Entrepreneur teaches founders how to start from anywhere to build any kind of software-enabled business. To pair with the book, Sahil also developed a course going further into “zero-to-one” entrepreneurship. Sahil engaged Big Monocle to design the book cover-to-cover, as well as design the “universe” of The Minimalist Entrepreneur including logo, course slide designs and social media.

Solutions

We first began our project with the main piece, Sahil’s book cover. Working with Penguin Random House, the prompt from Sahil was to design a cover that conveyed simplicity and minimalism (obviously), as well as being able to accomplish a large amount of work–like starting a business–with the least burn. Key visual direction was also that this book shouldn’t feel like a business book; less cheesy metaphors, more fun and light-heartedness. Along with the front, back and spine designs, we also aided in creative direction of the interior designs and layout. Once we shipped off the final print-ready files to the printer, we were engaged to help design the rest of The Minimalist Entrepreneur universe. This included the course design that accompanied the book, as well as social media graphics and assets.

Publisher: Portfolio, Penguin Random House
Interior & spot illustrations: Chris Welch

PROJECT TYPE
Book Cover Design
Branding & Identity
Logo Design
Presentation Design

STUDIO
Big Monocle

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