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Five Designers, One Illustrator, Two Letterers and More Than a Hundred Versions of a Jacket

hausfrau

If you’ve ever wondered quite how many iterations a cover can go through before the final one is chosen, this video cycles through a multitude of design ideas for the US edition of Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum published by Random House this month:

“I worked with five designers, one illustrator and two letterers on more than a hundred versions of the jacket,” Robbin Schiff, executive art director at Random House, told Mashable. “The final design, with its stark Swiss typography against the moody and lush floral grouping, conveys a sensual but claustrophobic atmosphere”.1

And, if you’re interested, you also read about the cover of the UK edition created by Maricor/Maricar (pictured below) on the Picador Blog. The whole process sounds a little less… fraught.

hausfrau-UK

UPDATE: Thank you to the folks at Random House for letting me know that the final cover for the US edition was designed by the talented Gabrielle Bordwin. The video was created by Caroline Teagle.

Notes:
1. or Peter Saville / Factory Records, circa Power, Corruption, Lies. Or is that just me? (Not that it’s a bad thing)

One Comment

  1. Yup. Long and painful (but still pretty awesome) process.

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