We first picked up on graphic designer Malika Favre's remarkably expressive vector artwork last year and she's pleased to present her latest project, the cover illustration for the forthcoming Penguin Deluxe edition of the Kama Sutra.

Favre gladly shared some insight into the brief and process:I was approached last summer by Paul Buckley at Penguin US about designing the cover of a new Deluxe edition of the Kama Sutra for Penguin.

This book is part of the Graphic Classics series: Basically every classic they re-edit is paired up with an artist that pretty much has free range to design the cover. The whole concept of this specific range is to make each classic a collectable item and to push the boundaries of book cover design.

The book itself is the original text written by Vatsyayana (no pictures inside the book) so the challenge was to make the cover sexy, modern and daring without being vulgar or over the top. I decided to create a very bold and playful alphabet that would run across both flaps and front and back cover spelling KAMA SUTRA.

Once folded, the words become hidden and the big letters themselves turn into acrobatic positions.

As with our previous post on Favre, it gets semi-NSFW after the jump... in extremely good taste, of course.

While the suggestively-positioned blocks of color certainly reflect Favre's aesthetic, the designer also notes that "I also wanted to keep that Indian feel in the color palette but make the design itself very modern and edgy." We think she's succeeded—do you?

See all of the Penguin Classics Deluxe edition book covers here.