I was thinking about the best New Zealand book cover of 2025. Which book would I choose? There are tonnes of great covers this year, and in every year. But it was oddly easy in 2025. One cover kept popping into my mind's eye, and it was the cover I saw when I thought about the best: SICK. POWER. TRIP.
Eight months ago on Bluesky, Te Herenga Waka University Press announced the book Sick Power Trip by Erik Kennedy, cover by Todd Atticus. I was stoked, both by the prospect of a new book of poems by this super poet - and by the cover. I called it glam and dangerous. It is. It's also 80s, retro, vaporwave, colour-popping, with font that doesn't stop and typography that make you woozy. And there's something bad going on, something desperate and apocalyptic that the cover hints at. Today the cover still hits me with a wham in the chest. Just like Erik's poems.
The cover was designed by Todd Atticus. He's nominated for the 2025 HarperCollins Publishers Award for Best Cover in the PANZ Book Design Awards for Bad Archive by Flora Feltham. Todd's work is a constant eye-popping delight. So many times I've thought "Oooooh I LOVE that cover", looked under the hood, and found it's the mahi of Todd. His covers are clearly the work of an artist - one with a distinctive style - inventive, striking, bold, playing with font and art and colour, pure GOLD. There is something extra too, it feels like Todd is a reader who loves books and that literary love gives him extra strength in interpreting and reflecting the contents of the book.
Todd kindly agreed to share how he designed the cover of Sick Power Trip:
This was the second time I’ve had the opportunity to design a cover for Erik Kennedy’s poetry, the first being for his 2018 collection There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime. On that occasion the cover came together almost collaboratively. Erik suggested the 19th century artwork Spring by Scottish painter William McTaggart and I melded it with a hazy pastel gradient background and floating messenger bubbles for the title and Erik’s name.
In some ways, this year’s Sick Power Trip is a gritty older sibling to There's no place like the Internet in Springtime. The cover continues vaporwave-adjacent colour palettes and a not-so-subtle social critique of modernity set against an appreciation of the natural world. However, if Kennedy’s first collection had any shred of innocence and wilful naivety of the world’s evils, his third collection dispenses with those. His observations are razor-sharp, biting and acrid and I wanted the cover to reflect this.Initially I explored a type-only cover and played with ways the text could mirror the darkness and modern madness of the collection. I drew and photocopied lettering, rescanning them to create garish pixellated shadow trails. I printed and screwed-up the words, letting the creases in the text begin to distort the type. At one point I even spent a frenzied afternoon squeezing mayonnaise onto a tabletop to construct loose, sludgy letterforms that hovered on the margins of legibility.
Although I liked the effect of lot of these early treatments, I decided that the best way to represent Sick Power Trip was though a single arresting image.
The photographic collage I found of a Bahraini man staring into an oceanic sunset from the driver’s side of a sinking car fit the bill perfectly. It beautifully depicted a moment in one of Erik’s poems but also contained the right feel for the collection overall. It was a visceral visual hook for studying impending doom.
The final cover features the sun and ripples in a souped-up magenta, with the title and Erik’s name in a chunky sans serif font, lopsided as if also being pulled under the surface of the water.
More about Todd Atticus
Find out more about artist and book cover designer Todd Atticus:
- Todd talks about designing the cover of She's a Killer by Kirsten McDougall
- Read an interview with Todd on Design Assembly
- Visit Todd's website https://www.toddatticus.com/
- Follow on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/toddatticus.bsky.social
- Follow on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/toddatticus/
- Follow on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/toddatticus
- Vist the SlashBackslash website (art direction and design from Todd Atticus, specialising in book covers, typography and brand identities).
Have a look at more great covers designed by Todd this year:
And in 2024:
See covers designed by Todd Atticus at Te Herenga Waka University Press
And I spy another brilliant cover by Todd coming in 2026 ... Swoon!
More about Erik Kennedy
Erik Kennedy is the author of the Ockham-shortlisted There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018), Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022), and Sick Power Trip (2025). All three are published by Te Herenga Waka University Press. Originally from New Jersey, he lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch.
The poet formerly known as Poet Laureate Chris Tse had this to say:
‘Erik Kennedy’s Sick Power Trip thrillingly challenges and dissects the horrors of the world piling outside our front doors. This isn’t just a story of heroes versus villains: it’s a sage reminder for us to question where we stand and what we’re capable of as individuals. I adore Kennedy’s sharp wit and erudite humour, and his ability to walk the line between optimism and pessimism. This collection is a masterful example of taking back power one poem at a time.’
- Poems and articles by and about Erik Kennedy in The Spinoff
- Poet Erik Kennedy on words, inspiration and a love of cats Rachel Comer, Stuff, 2 September 2024
- Blog posts about Erik Kennedy on the library website
- Find books by Erik Kennedy at the library
Book launch for Sick Power Trip at Scorpio Books, 10 July 2025
More covers
Visit our Best Book covers page for more of the best of 2025 and previous years.
Add a comment to: Best Aotearoa book cover of 2025 – Sick Power Trip by Erik Kennedy, cover by Todd Atticus