Today, Zoo City’s iJusi, a fictional Afropop band got their album cover featured in a real-life Afropop design magazine, called, naturally, iJusi. 

It’s by designer/illustrator Will Krüger on assignment for the magazine’s new issue,  to create fictional album artwork.

I love the witty details; the record label logo, the emergency exit glass, the iconic taxi, super-souped-up, the scaly infinity loop around the twins, the shout-out to cover designer Joey Hi-Fi, the terribly painful pun which also sums up one of the novel’s major themes: “what comes surround, goes surround”. Genius! (Click here to see it full size)

This isn’t actually a coincidence. Zoo City’s very first iteration was as the blurb for a “fictional novel”, a design brief put out by iJusi magazine in 2009.

My illustrator friend Simon Villet asked me to come up with something for him to illustrate. I wrote 300 words of story from the book that was developing in the back of my head like a polaroid and he illustrated a beautiful dark whimsy of a cover.

I’ll dig it out and put it up after the jump, because the title of that work is VERY SPOILERIFIC. [It's on my old hdd, give me a day to get it up]

Anyway, when I was casting around for a good teen twin singing sensation band name, iJusi hit all the right notes of fun South Africana, so it’s a homage to the mag. And now it’s come full circle.

This is stuff that makes me super-happy. It’s lovely when people riff off your stuff in interesting and creative ways (see also: the Zoo City art exhibition)

Huge thanks to Will Kruger for the gorgeous and clever interpretation.

Now all I need is a band to record the actual song.