Where design is concerned, I’ve never been great at pure conceptualization. I need to create, and endlessly fiddle with, physical copies of whatever I’m working on in order to ensure its aesthetic and functional success. When the items in question are double-sided, eight-panel foldouts or saddle-stitched booklets inserted snuggly—but not too snuggly—into pockets that will later be bound into an issue, it’s essential for me to discover whether they’re working well before the issue goes to press.

Luckily for me, I enjoy making mockups. Sometimes these are scaled versions—like the four-by-six-inch black-and-white dummy I created for the second issue of publicsfear—and sometimes they’re full-size, like the “flats” I created on a large-format inkjet printer for every issue of Esopus. These contained every insert, foldout, and poster for a particular issue, taped-in, numbered, and labeled with instructions for our printer. The flats served two roles: as a guide for me during the design process, and as a bible of sorts for press operators, production coordinators, and bindery supervisors as an issue was printed and bound.

And then there are those “orphan mockups”—designs created for projects that were never realized. A few examples—specifically for book-design projects that went by the wayside—are included here.