Jon Hicks Presents the Supernatural Detective’s Field Guide

Jon Hicks is a world-class illustrator who’s worked with the likes of Apple, Canva, Disney, and Mozilla. Arguably, his most well-known work is the original logo for the Firefox browser, but he’s also worked on the Thunderbird email client’s logo, marketing for the DuckDuckGo search engine, and Spotify’s redesign.

One thing I love about Hicks’ work is that it’s incredibly clean and elegant, and everything he does is unmistakably Hicks-esque while still looking fresh, unique, and full of charm. If I had to select Hicks’ most charming work, though, it’d have to be his own Supernatural Detective’s Field Guide, a personal illustration project inspired by two of his favorite childhood books: The Detective’s Handbook and The Guide to the Supernatural, both of which were published in 1979 when Hicks was 6 years old. He writes:

The two books had very different illustration styles, but both captivated my imagination in equal measure. Together they inspired a love of Supernatural Mysteries, Detective Procedures and Trench Coats.

I’d been trying to find an engaging thematic prompt, to help me overcome the quandary of ‘what to draw?’, and it finally clicked: create an imagined merger of those two Usborne volumes. Over the years there have been many other influences too, particularly the Rivers of London novels by Ben Aaronovitch, the BBC TV Series Ghosts and the Apple TV Series The Enfield Poltergeist.

Hicks has published several entries in the guide to date, which touch on everything from the equipment necessary to investigate the supernatural (don’t forget the biscuits!) to the nature of poltergeists to the Gaelic festival of Samhain — and all of them feature his illustrations, which don’t look “retro” but nevertheless, have a nostalgic quality to them.

There’s no set publishing schedule; as Hicks puts it, “the intention here is to have a bit of fun with it, and see where (if anywhere) it leads.” But I’ll say that this is the sort of supernatural investigation I would’ve enjoyed reading as a kid, and I definitely enjoy it as an adult.