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Category: Q & A

Q & A with Dan Mogford

Filthy English
If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you will surely have a come across the work of London-based freelance designer Dan Mogford before. His work — including covers for 419 by Will Ferguson, All Over the Map by Michael Sorkin, and Filthy English by Peter Silverton (pictured above, and now available as a poster should need the swears on your wall) — has been featured here on numerous occasions over the years. A longer feature on Dan’s work has felt overdue for some time now, and so I’m very pleased to finally have Q & A with the designer himself on the blog today. Dan and I corresponded by email…

MotherTongue

Do you remember when you first became interested in design?
Although I was exposed to design from a young age. I was always sure I would end up in a scientific career – I was all set on becoming an oceanographer or marine biologist, then around the age of 16 I was given a black and white darkroom kit by a friend of the family and was hooked on the whole process immediately. Within a year I’d applied and been accepted onto a foundation art course despite the fact I was doing science and maths A-levels. This was also around the time that Pixies came screaming onto the indie music scene and Vaughan Oliver and Simon Larbalestier’s bonkers, twisted, dark and sexy artwork for the albums struck a chord with my tortured 18-year-old psyche…

Was anyone else in your family creative?
My father was an engraver for The Royal Mint, first in London then later in Wales where we relocated when I was 4. He designed and engraved coins and commemorative medals for a variety of countries and organisations around the world so I spent a lot of time watching him hand-lettering then intricately carving type and images into these large plaster discs, which would later be somehow magically turned into little metal stamps for coin minting.

Did you study design at school?
When I finished secondary (high) school I went off to do a one year art foundation course with a fantastic array of tutors and access to screen printing, etching and some very clunky early Macs (1991!) which eventually lured me away from the darkrooms. From there I went to Central Saint Martins to study Graphic Design after I realised that type didn’t just belong on a label underneath photographs.

Intimesfadinglight_PB

Are your kids interested in design?
My wife is a textile designer so their exposure to art & design has been a constant, whether it’s books at home or trips to galleries and visits to friends who work in similar fields. I’m secretly hoping one or all of them will rebel and go into law or marine biology though.

Where did you start your career?
During the second year of my degree course I wrote to the art departments of virtually every major publishing house in London asking for a summer holiday work placement/internship – only one of them replied! I did 3 seperate placements with the Pan Macmillan design crew thanks to the lovely Art Director Fiona Carpenter. When I left college Fiona put me in touch with a design studio called The Senate where I ended up working for 4 years on predominantly book related projects for the likes of Penguin, Random House and Macmillan – among many others.

419

Why did you decide to go freelance?
I went freelance in January 2000, bitten by millenium fever and the realisation that I’d gone about as far as I could in the small design studio I was at. I think being freelance was for me inevitable as I’ve never been very good at being told what to do by other people! I’m lucky it worked out for me, I’ve had certain clients since I went freelance fourteen (!) years ago and have worked with a huge variety of brilliant people in that time. Also some idiots.

What advice would you give a designer thinking about going out own on their own?
If you’re considering it then you’re halfway there. Don’t overthink it, don’t fret, go for it. What’s the worse that could happen?

Sicilian Uncles

What are your favourite kinds of projects?
I seem to have worked on quite a few series designs in the last couple of years and have realised that I really enjoy the challenge and constraints that entails. I like solving the problem of branding a set of books that hang together while still letting each have their own distinct, individual voice – and it really appeals to the collector in me.

Sciascias

What kind of books present the greatest creative challenges?
Again a series design can be challenging but very rewarding if you crack it. I’m really not a fan of the hastily written brief with a scattering of Amazon thumbnails ‘for reference’ and a ‘do whatever’ undertone. You’d think that carte blanche was a gift to a designer but those jobs always end up rumbling on and becoming headaches as there’s been no thought about a clear direction or postioning for the book. Some constraints are a good thing to rub against and work with.

Can you describe your process for designing a book cover?
Sketching and doodling and hot shower meditation. I always draw lots of scrappy little thumbnails of ideas as they occur to me along with word lists and diagrams with arrows linking things. Lots of arrows for some reason… When I have a good feeling about an idea I’ll refine it to a more polished visual on the Mac to a point where it can go into a cover meeting by itself and face the scrutinity of the meeting without me there to defend or excuse it. Then of course comes the email requesting a few tweaks and so it goes on. Occasionally a great idea will survive the sales department waterboarding unscathed – that makes it all worthwhile.

Morcheeba

Do you approach music packaging differently from book covers?
I think they’re actually very similar disciplines in that you’re trying to distill the essence of the thing into a visual that will connect with people in some way while respecting the content that another person has poured a good chunk of their life into creating. I think as with great book designs the conent and the package can become inextricably linked but record design can only do so much – music can be quite resistant to visual interpretation, more so than the written word I think.

A Human Being Died

You were suddenly taken ill at the end of 2012. Have you fully recovered?
For anyone who hasn’t yet been bored to tears by my health history, I had a heart infection which came out of the blue and very nearly killed me. I had open-heart surgery followed by several months of hospitalisation and recovery but can safely say I’m 99% back to the stubborn, easily distracted muppet I was before my illness. Thanks for asking.

Did your illness change your approach to work? Do have a different perspective on it than before?
Absolutely. I’m a lot less tolerant of bad clients! I sacked a few within a couple of months of getting back to work properly and am much more picky about who I work with and what on. Life actually is too short. I’ve also started a little sideline business producing art prints from my collection of printed ephemera and packaging because it makes me happy and the marketing department consists of ME.

Who are some of your design heroes?
Vaughan Oliver is the main reason I got into this graphic design lark. He let me shadow him at 4AD for a day while I was doing my design degree which only confirmed his likeability and genius.

Also: Lustig, Sagmeister, Conran, Kidd.

6HATS

Who do you think is doing interesting work right now?
In terms of book design, I’m not going to stroke/stoke the egos of the UK book design Mafia anymore, they know who they are and they’re all bloody fabulous people and constanly inspiring. Same goes for that lot over the pond. Bastards. Also more generally: Dan Cassaro, Elana Schlenker, Rob Lowe, Marcus Walters, Steven Wilson, Dan Matutina

What‘s in your ‘to read’ pile?
I’m gradually working my way through a list of classics I feel I should really have read by this point in my life – I’ve just finished Jamaica Inn and made a start on Love in the Time of Cholera. I also have a few classic ghost stories lined up for the darkening autumn evenings…

Tony-Susan

Do you have system for organizing your books?
None whatsoever. I love having slippery piles of books all around my studio. They give off a barely discernible warmth and are good company now I work alone.

Do you have a favourite book?
Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree series were the first books I remember my mum reading to me as a child. She carefully kept them in pristine condition and I’ve just finished reading them to my son Milo who adored them too.

What does the future hold for book cover design?
I think we’re at an interesting point in the story of books and their covers. I’m certainly being asked to consider the whole book package more frequently than I once was – things like cloth colours and foils on hardbacks as well as endpaper designs, varnishes and other little flourishes that make the physical book the covetable item an ebook can never be. Some design briefs demand that the cover works strongly as an Amazon thumbnail which is an interesting constraint akin to designing stamps or matchbox labels – a reductive process and simplification that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I don’t think books as objects are going to vanish any time soon and whatever happens down the line – products physical or digital – will always be packaged.

Thanks Dan!

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Q & A with Matt Roeser, Candlewick Press

If you follow book design on social media at all, chances are you’ve come already across Matt Roeser‘s  funny, if somewhat dinosaur-fixated, Twitter feed. But over the past couple of years as senior designer at independent children’s publisher Candlewick Press in Massachusetts, Matt has been quietly producing some bright, brilliant, and original covers for their line of young adult titles.

I first came across Matt’s work about 4 years ago when he first started a Tumblr project called New Cover, and was working outside publishing in St. Louis. Now he is designing books full-time, it only seemed appropriate to ask him a few questions about his interests and influences, his work, and his career. We corresponded by email.

Below

Were there a lot of books in your house growing up?

Absolutely. We lived two blocks away from our library, so my parents were always taking my brother and I there and letting me bring home as much as I could carry. That, paired with the book order forms our teachers would pass out every month (of which I had an unhealthy level of excitement for) meant there was always a constant stream of books in our house.

Did you have a favourite book as a kid?

I had three, and to this day, still can’t decide which one I like the most because they’re each fabulous in their own way: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler because the kids run away and live in a museum (I’m still hoping to do this one day!), The Westing Game, because it’s an epic murder mystery, and The Phantom Tollbooth, because it’s so imaginative and full of wordplay, which I have a soft-spot for.

EggandSpoon

Do you remember when you first became interested in design?

Yes, and it was paired with reading in a way. The movie Jurassic Park came out when I was 10 and I went with my brother to see it at least 5 or 6 times and was just completely enthralled. Then my brother bought the book with the now-classic Chip Kidd design on the front. I read it and, being my first “big-person” book that I had read, it really stuck with me. I remember thinking it was so cool that the design of the jacket was used for the logo for the park in the movie. And it was on t-shirts, lunchboxes, everything. The fact that a new Jurassic Park movie is coming out next year, and they’re still using Chip Kidd’s design just makes me so happy. So while I don’t think I completely realized it at the time, that’s the moment that I became aware and interested in design. And since I’ve never actually grown up, all of the things I loved as a child (dinosaurs, space, time travel) still excite me to this day (thus why a majority of my tweets revolve around dinosaurs). I even had a Jurassic Park themed 30th birthday party which was simultaneously my most proud and most embarrassing moment in life.

Is anyone else in your family creative?

Yeah, my immediate and extended family is full of carpenters and woodworkers, interior designers and painters and people that just generally like to create and build with their hands.

Did you study design at school?

Initially, when I started college, I dove deep into marketing. However, I quickly found out, after taking macro-economics and a plethora of other numbers-based courses, that the business side of marketing was not at all interesting to me. I then started taking a bunch of creative communication classes that included various advertising and graphic design courses, and quickly felt much more at home. Ultimately, a lot of my design education was self-taught, but at school I learned the basic process of working on creative projects that really stuck with me.

What were you doing before you joined Candlewick?

I worked with the creative team at Atomicdust, a branding and marketing agency in St. Louis, Missouri. I definitely learned the ins and outs of the creative process while there. We had a great array of clients that allowed us to flex our creative muscles in a variety of ways as we came up with messaging and then decided the best ways to get that message out. Learning how to boil down a company’s entire purpose/goals/soul into a clear message was great experience for what I do now: communicating an entire book’s essence through its jacket.

Caminar

Before you were designing books professionally, you started New Cover, a self-initiated project redesigning the covers of some of your favourite books. Was your goal to get a job in publishing?

Ultimately. It was really driven from the fact that I love to read and I love design, and it had always been a secret “dream-job” ambition of mine to make of career of combining the two. Part of my job at Atomicdust was hiring designers, and as a result, I was sent tons of resumes and portfolios. Every once in a while, there would be someone who didn’t have any work to show but was still looking for a job, but you can’t really hire a designer without seeing any of their work. And then it hit me; if I wanted publishers to hire me to design book covers, they weren’t just going to do it because they saw that I could design websites and brochures. They would need to see book covers. So I picked a few of my favorite books and started creating new covers for them. The project was featured on a couple of design blogs and then spiralled from there into real work from publishers.

Can you tell me a little bit about Candlewick Press and what it’s like to work there?

Candlewick has all of the best elements of a smaller company mixed with the structure of a larger corporate company. There are about 95 employees in total and we’re all on one huge floor of a building in Davis Square, a sort of hipster-y area right outside of Boston. It’s a really open and encouraging environment that gives me the freedom to fully visualize the design ideas I have for titles. We’re the companion company to Walker Books in the UK as well as Walker Australia, so occasionally we’ll take on some of their titles and vice versa, or we’ll coordinate a global launch for a title that we will all be simultaneously publishing. It also means we have an almost never-ending source of imported chocolates and cookies coming to the office via visitors from our other branches.

How many designers work in your office?

The art department has about 15 designers, a majority of who work primarily on picture books. I mostly work on young adult and middle grade fiction and a non-fiction title every now and then.

AvaLavender

Did you ever think you would make a career of designing kids’ books?

Looking back at previous jobs, you can definitely see all of the stepping stones that got me here. In high school, I worked in the children’s room of my town’s library. Then, during college, I worked at a preschool. So I’ve always sort of been surrounded by kids’ books. That, paired with graphic design in college and at Atomicdust, and it makes sense.

Can you describe your process for designing a book cover?

First, I read the book. I like to think that the jacket idea is already there in the text somewhere and I just have to find it and bring it to fruition. Once I’ve read the manuscript, I start sketching out ideas both on paper and on my computer. Sometimes I have a really clear initial vision of what the cover should look like and the final cover ends up looking pretty similar. Other times, I won’t have as clean-cut of an initial idea, so I’ll do really broad image searches based on a few keywords I’ve written down while reading just to get the wheels turning. It’s hard to say where ideas come from. The ultimate goal is to make a finished product that would catch someone’s eye, regardless of who the specific audience is. If I can make it interesting enough for anyone to pick up, I’ve done my job.

MoreThanThis

What are your favourite kinds of projects to work on?

Anything that’s a little off. As a reader, I like stories where about 75% of what’s going on seems normal and then there’s this gray space remaining where something unexpected/bizarre/weird is happening. It’s why I like books like The Prestige, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, A Tale for the Time Being, and the TV show LOST. So story-wise, those are projects I get the most excited about. Also, anytime a book is part of Launch (the titles that the publisher is really pumped about) because that ultimately means they’re willing to try different things to set the book apart. Whether it’s a die-cut through the case for More Than This, or a ¾ jacket wrapped around a printed case, or stamping the entire design in foil, I enjoy playing with the materials in new ways.

Who are some of your design heroes?

Chip Kidd, Jonathan Gray, Peter Mendelsund. Their designs are always interesting, unique and more often than not, little works of art.

zebra-forest

Who else do you think is doing interesting work right now?

Will Staehle and Oliver Munday. They are two people that whenever I see their name on a book jacket, I’m simultaneously super excited to see a great cover and also maddeningly jealous of their innate talent that makes it look so easy. I haven’t seen a cover of theirs that I don’t like.

Is there a particular author or a book you’d like to design (or redesign!) a cover for?

Hmm, this is tough. I feel like a lot of them I did as part of New Cover back in the day, although I should revisit some of those and the questionable design decisions I made at the time. Some of those author names are in such a tiny point size that I just laugh thinking about it now. I would love to take on a series redesign as it’s something I haven’t gotten the chance to do professionally.

What’s in your ‘to read’ pile?

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell! I’ve been anticipating this book for a while after reading and falling in love with his novel Cloud Atlas. A coworker was able to grab an ARC of the The Bone Clocks at BEA, so I’m currently immersed in it. I’m also looking forward to the new Murakami book coming out in a few months. And, after numerous people have told me that they can’t believe I haven’t read it yet, The Lost City of Z is the next book I’m reading.

FloatingShelves

Do you have a system for organizing your books?

A few years back, I saw a floating pile of books on a wall in a design store and thought it was genius. Then, like I do with most things, I went overboard and bought 15 of them to hang over my desk. (See photo) They’re perfect for displaying some of my books in a way that’s a little different than normal. I try and fill them with a good mix of books I love and books that are visually amazing, and then put the majority of my other books in these three huge old steel lockers I have. One day, I will have a room with shelves going up every wall and a rolling ladder that I can ride around on like Belle does in the beginning of Beauty and the Beast and then I will truly be happy.

What’s the one book you recommend to everyone?

Cloud Atlas. It’s one where I would pause after reading a sentence and look out the window and contemplate life and just wonder how anyone could possibly be this good at writing. If you only saw the movie and hated it, go read the book. Before that, A Confederacy of Dunces. The dialogue is hysterical and I don’t remember laughing more at a book in my entire life.

PlayForTheCommandant

What does the future hold for book cover design?

I think regardless of how popular ebook readers become, there’s always going to be those titles that people want to buy a physical copy of. Maybe this means, as an industry, we make fewer (but more special) physical versions of books, which I don’t necessarily see as a bad thing. I’m a big believer in quality over quantity and if we want people to buy physical books, they need to be everything that they can’t get in an ebook: the materials should be exceptional, the design should be a work of art, the interior should have (gasp!) well thought out margins. It should be something they want to display. On the flip side, there’s always going to be an audience that only cares about the content. They don’t want stacks of books everywhere, don’t want to lug them around, don’t care (gasp!) about margins. I can understand all of that. But there will still be a need for associating some sort of image with the book. I can’t/don’t want to imagine a future where there’s just a long text list of titles that people choose from with no accompanying visual. When that day comes, you can find me barricaded in my own personal library, muttering to myself as I zoom around on my rolling ladder.

Thanks Matt!

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Q & A with Erin Fitzsimmons

House of Ivy and Sorrow

In recent years, I doubt there’s been a greater publishing success story than Young Adult — or ‘YA’ —  fiction.

Sometimes mistakenly described as a genre, YA is actually an age-category roughly ascribed to books across a range of subjects and genres that are suitable for teenagers. Yet, confusingly,  YA is not quite synonymous with ‘Teen Fiction.’ While Teen Fiction is assigned books appropriate for ages 12-17, YA is increasingly used to describe (albeit loosely) fiction intended specifically for older teens and even readers in their 20s and beyond.

In 2012, Publishers Weekly reported that “55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17… are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44, a group that alone accounted for 28% of YA sales.” If it wasn’t exactly news that grown-ups read books for teens, their willingness to do so openly, and the development of a passionate fan culture driven as much by these adults as teens, has seen a change in the way publishers think about YA and how they package it.

The growing sophistication of YA cover design can be seen in the work of Erin Fitzsimmons, associate art director for HarperTeen in New York. The attention to lettering and typography throughout Erin’s work, notably on the cover of House of Ivy and Sorrow by Natalie Whipple and Tease by Amanda Maciel (see below), convinced me that YA design is something that should be featured here and happily Erin agreed to talk about her work. We corresponded by email.

EveninParadise_jacket

Did you read a lot of books growing up?

When I was very young, I memorized my favorite children’s book, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, so I could “read” it to my little sister. When I was older, I was into all the big chapter and middle-grade series: Goosebumps, Boxcar Children, Sweet Valley High. I must’ve just missed the Harry Potter era. I’m reading them now and they’re incredible.

Do you remember your favourite book as a teenager?

It’s funny—I’ve read far more teen books now than I ever read growing up. As a high school student, you have to do so much required reading for school, I don’t remember reading many books for fun. The book I remember reading most vividly as a teen was Jurassic Park. I went through a Michael Crichton phase, and then skipped straight to John Grisham. I read pretty much his entire library in mass market paperbacks over the course of a few summers.

When did you first become interested in design?

About 7 years ago, I started working in publishing as a photo editor. I went to school for photojournalism, but it wasn’t for me. I was convinced that since I couldn’t hack it as a photographer, I was meant to be a photo editor. Indeed, I was much better at editing, but after a year or so, my Art Director offered me the chance to design a book cover. It was love at first design, and I haven’t looked back since.

cruel-beauty

Is anyone else in your family creative?

Fortunately, my entire immediate family is creative. Both of my parents went to art school, and are supremely more talented than I will ever be. My dad owns an art gallery and frame shop, and my mom is a floral designer. My little sisters are also involved in creative fields: one is an art therapist and the other works at a youth theater when not in college. Thanks to them, I feel very supported in what I do. Even better, I don’t ever have to explain what a book designer does to them! A slightly unfortunate side effect is that simple things like Easter egg dyeing and pumpkin carving can get very competitive in my house.

Did you study design at school?

I desperately wanted to go to art school for photography, but my sage parents suggested I broaden my studies. I was lucky enough to find the Gallatin School at NYU. Gallatin allows you to take classes in all of the undergrad schools at NYU, and there are no traditional majors. So while my concentration was photojournalism, I was able to study communication and jazz history and documentary filmmaking and so forth. The challenge of this type of education was to find the way it all related to storytelling, and I’ve continued that practice in my professional career. I see design as a logical extension of storytelling, as it’s often the method and means through which stories are told. Without my Gallatin education, I might not have been so open to recognizing those relationships and trying new fields. Still to this day I find myself wanting to constantly learn new things. At the moment, it is type design, lettering, and calligraphy, but who knows what’s next.

BlackBoyWhiteSchool

Have you always specialized in young adult books?

My first experience designing books was at Fairchild Books, a small publisher of fashion and interior design textbooks. Even though we published educational books, their designs had to be a bit more stylish than your average textbook. My experience there was very much trial by fire, as I learned everything I could about design and publishing. A few years later I transitioned to HarperCollins, where I started designing mostly Young Adult and Middle Grade/Tween titles.

Can you describe your process for designing a book cover?

It differs from project to project. The basic step-by-step is usually the same: read the book > take notes > sketch/comp ideas > find artists > present > refine > present > (repeat some more…) > finalize! But within there are so many variables. There are a ton of people to please when it comes to a book cover, so that can certainly affect the flow.

Sometimes you’ll have an idea at the very start of the process, and sometimes it won’t come until much later. I tend to work up too many ideas in the early stages, and truth be told, many of my best ideas develop by mistake (or at least from different intentions) so it’s important for me to explore even the crazy/weird/bad ones.

I often find if your concept is good enough from the start, it should survive the rounds and rounds and come out all polished and shiny at the end. I am just finishing up an incredible project where the image I had in my head while reading became a pencil sketch and is now a striking piece of artwork. They can’t all be like that, but it certainly makes up for the rest.

SeptemberGirls

What are your favourite kinds of projects to work on?

I especially like working on stories that are out there and different. In the YA world, there tends to be a lot of repetition: Well, that worked, so let’s do it again, and again… So it’s truly exciting when you read something fresh. As a designer, you can really latch onto what makes the book unique, and focus on those differences to set the cover design apart.

What kinds of books present the greatest creative challenges?

There are a few genres in teen (Dystopian and Sci-Fi/Fantasy, for example) that have been tread upon so heavily that it can be difficult to come up with new and original ideas. Similarly, anything that can be considered trendy at the moment will be more of a challenge to break the mold of what’s been working for other publishers. We can try to resist the trend all we want, but too often in the end, commercial appeal will win out for the teen market. But we will still keep trying to push those boundaries.

Blackout_series

Do you approach series differently from individual cover designs?

Absolutely. We live in the land of trilogies, so if your idea won’t work three times, it won’t work at all. We often are asked to concept more than one book in a series at once, just to prevent the inevitable frustration if your idea doesn’t carry through. For the upcoming Snow Like Ashes, we designed the entire series from the start. The third book in that series won’t publish until 2016, so it’s a bit crazy to think that far ahead. Blackout was another instance where I found a series of photographs I loved, but I had to be sure from the outset that we could make each cover feel special across a series. Lately they’ve been adding last minute “interstitial” e-novellas to our release in between hardcovers in our bigger series. It might as well be the book design equivalent of a knuckleball.

For the cover of House of Ivy and Sorrow by Natalie Whipple you used a custom typeface called Ivy Type. Do you like to experiment with type design and lettering in your work?

I do, and House of Ivy & Sorrow is one of my all-time favorite projects for this reason! I had been sketching ideas for the cover design for weeks, and it just wasn’t working (my lettering skills are still very much in development). Luckily, I was able to hire fellow CooperType grad Sasha Prood to letter and illustrate the final cover. She took it so much further than I ever could have on my own. I am so grateful to get to work with incredible artists like her that make my ideas better.

The upside was that since we design both the book covers and interiors, I was able to digitize my lettering and create a character set to use for the interior design drop caps, so all was not lost in the end. I’ve created a couple of custom faces for book interiors I’ve worked on, and lately I’ve been doing a lot more hand-lettering for covers. It’s definitely something I want to keep exploring and improving upon.

HouseofIvy&Sorrow_process

Is the popularity of teen fiction among adults allowing you to create more sophisticated designs? Or is there just more pressure now on designers to produce commercial covers? 

It might be a bit of both, actually! I started in teen right as the Twilight phase was ending and Dystopian era was beginning, and so began the rise (and return) of more sophisticated subject matters. Realistic fiction has always been a staple of teen fiction, but the sheer popularity of authors like John Green and Rainbow Rowell has pushed it to the extreme in recent years. More adults are reading teen books, and therefore the covers have begun to mature along with their readers. There was also a time where sophisticated did not equal commercial. It’s wild how much that has shifted in just a few years. The lines are starting to blur and overlap, and I see it even in the adult section. It’s so fascinating to be a part of.

Cover designs are obviously important to YA readers, and ‘cover reveals’ have become common for big releases. But are YA covers still an under-appreciated art in the industry?

The cover reveal has taken on a life of its own. The popularity of Goodreads and the plethora of YA blogs has created the need for most authors to reveal their covers in advance of the catalog posting. It used to be only the lead titles were revealed, but now almost every cover ends up with the same fanfare. And with that fanfare comes scrutiny. There are entire blog posts dedicated to covers they like or don’t like. But between the reveals and the rising popularity of the teen genre, we’ve all been pushed to make better covers, and the results have been fantastic. YA covers used to be automatically looked down upon, but that is changing (slowly, but surely). And hopefully it continues to shift. I’d love to hire more adult designers to get their perspective on our genre. I also think a lot of people would be surprised at how much work goes into these covers. There are an ever growing number of talented folks working in teen design.

Delirium

Who are some of your design heroes?

Paula Scher, Peter Mendelsund, Louise Fili, Marian Bantjes, Chip Kidd, John Gall, Barbara deWilde.

Who do you think is doing interesting work right now?

Book design: Ray Shappell, Jen Heuer, Lucy Ruth Cummins, Jaya Miceli, Helen Yentus, Jon Gray, Theresa Evangelista, Olga Grlic, Elena Giavaldi, Oliver Munday.

Type/lettering/design: Dan Cassaro, Sasha Prood, Sean Freeman, Craig Ward, Isabel Urbina, I Love Dust, Kellerhouse.

InvisibleCities

Is there a particular author or a book you’d like to design (or redesign!) a cover for?

Italo Calvino would be a dream, though I fear Peter Mendelsund might have dibs! Maybe the next repackage?

I designed a cover for Invisible Cities for an SVA Continuing Ed typography class that I still really like, but I’d love to take another swing at it, along with the rest of his work.

What‘s in your ‘to read’ pile?

I am halfway through two epic series: Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, Italo Calvino’s Letters, Wildwood by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, The Luminaries, Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway.

Do you have system for organizing your books?

Most of our design and photography books are in the living room, but the rest of our (far too many) books are in the bedroom. We have a large white bookcase in there, and most of our décor is gray and white, so I spent way too long arranging the books in a rainbow spectrum. It’s not the most functional way, but it sure looks pretty and it’s forced me to pay a lot more attention to spine design.

Do you have a favourite book?

Invisible Cities. I read it first in college and have read it countless times since. There’s always something new to discover.

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What does the future hold for book cover design?

Innovative and interactive packaging, a focus on book as object, and (hopefully) a continual blurring of the lines between adult and teen design.

Thank you, Erin!

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Q & A with Isabel Urbina Peña

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If you’ve walked into a North American bookstore recently, or you’ve been paying attention to the book reviews on this side of the Atlantic, you will have no doubt seen the stylish black cover for All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu with its distinctive chalkboard lettering. Or perhaps you remember the hand-lettered cover for the Knopf edition of The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri? It was one of my favourite covers of the past year. Both are the work of Venezuelan designer Isabel Urbina Peña. Now based in New York City, Isabel is a cover designer for Random House and creator of a typographic zine called Rants from a Stranger.

Since relaunching her website earlier this year, Isabel’s cover designs have been featured on numerous blogs already (including here), but I was thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to her earlier this month about her work and career in greater depth.

Isabel and I corresponded by email. Here is our conversation:

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Do you remember when you first became interested in design?

I think because of my parents, art was in my life since I can remember. But, when I was in 7th grade there was a big boom of internet start-ups in Venezuela and I remember clearly “deciding” that I wanted to be a graphic designer then…I was 13 and the concept of what graphic design was at the time was probably wrong, but that moment definitely steered me in this direction. Also, there was a moment in my “foundation year” in college where one of my type teachers talked about how the “typographer” was present in the page, but invisible to the reader and that just flipped a switch in my brain.

Is anyone else in your family creative?

Both of my parents are architects and they really motivated my sister and me creatively while growing up.

We spent half of our childhoods going to museums, plays, as well as ceramic, poetry and creative writing classes. My dad also paints and belongs to a drawing circle. When I was little he would sit with me and walk me through art books or give me a canvas and ask me to paint from inspiration, or even from some big painting like Van Gogh’s sunflowers. Paul Klee, Gauguin and Chagall are a few of the artists that I discovered through them when I was six or seven… I have to say my mind was blown, I still cherish those moments.

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Were there a lot of books in your house growing up?

A ton. My dad also reads a LOT… So he wanted me to be “a reader.” I would get books for Christmas, birthdays, holidays, regular days…no Nintendo growing up… believe me that was tough, haha. He really sparked a love for reading and I would find new material everywhere; at my grandma’s I would read through all my uncle’s adventure books; at garage sales I started picking up Penguin paperbacks because they looked so simple and literary. Reading felt like something my dad and I shared, but it was also mine to discover.

Did you study design in Venezuela?

Yes, I studied at a small school called ProDiseño. Until very recently the “campus” was literally a two-flight house with a tub and a living room. Classes were really small, so everyone knew each other. The school started after a group of 80 students from IDD (Instituto de Diseño Neumann) left to start their own school. Neumann was founded by a large group of European immigrants who taught them design through the Bauhaus principles. Prodiseño had a very strong inclination towards clean, conceptual design. Everything had a purpose and “a why.” The content always came first; then the form. It was a very special experience and it prepared me to do anything (design, typography, illustration, animation, motion graphics…) and most importantly taught me to learn how to “think.” It was a very complete, Renaissance-style education.

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Is there a strong arts/design community in Caracas?

Definitely, though it is a rather small one compared to New York City, it is very interesting.

There are a lot of events that support the arts and design and mostly DIY culture. A lot of self-proposed shows and collectives that put on parties with great visuals and self-produced posters. Also, a lot of zines and self-published publications are popping all over town.

How is living in New York different?

Well, New York is different in every way: from the variety of people you meet to the cultural experiences that are available to you. Living here, for me, has been a rich experience loaded with references of all kinds, and motivation. If anything it makes me expect more from myself and aim higher.

How long have you lived there?

This is my 6th year in New York, but it honestly feels like I just got here. Of course, I’ve learned so much and evolved, but it feels like it never gets old.

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Does what’s going on in Venezuela worry you?

YES, I am glad you asked.

I am extremely worried by what’s going on in Venezuela and I think not enough people know about our situation. Protests started almost two months ago and people are being murdered and attacked on the streets daily and there doesn’t seem to be any change in the attitude of the current government. The truth is the people have the right to protest for the many problems that Venezuelan people are dealing with right now (the extreme insecurity they live in, the rapidly increasing inflation rates, the scarcity of many basic necessities and the extreme corruption, just to name a few) and the way that the government is handling this protests is, just, criminal. There are human right violations occurring left and right and even though there is proof (video and photos) for a lot of these events, the government is turning a blind eye and not doing anything to impart justice. Instead they focus their efforts in bullying opposition leaders and undermining the people’s rights. It is very, very sad and scary for all Venezuelan people and unfortunately change won’t come easily… but Venezuelans are still fighting hard, hopefully with a brighter future awaiting for all.

Can you describe your process for designing a book cover?

I start by reading the book and the TI (Title Info) sheet, getting familiar with the author and his backlist, if there is one. I take a bunch of notes and list ideas while and after I’m reading. I try to list everything—you never know when the “silliest” idea will spark something good. I’ll do a mood board and sketch a selection of these ideas in small (2 x 3 inches or so) detailed thumbnails with pencil and paper. Depending on the book, developing these ideas might be on or off the computer. I do a lot of paperback-size pencil sketches to define a lot of the lettering shapes and details.

Sometimes I will ink and do minimal clean up in the computer and sometimes I digitize the lettering in a font editing software and make the comps. Once I do that, I usually present a range of “developed” ideas and looks to my art director. We discuss if we need to adjust or tighten anything and then show the editors.

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What are your favourite kinds of projects to work on?

Honestly, I am quite new at this, and I try to get the most out of any project. Figuring out what best represents the book I’m working on is one of the things I enjoy the most. That said, I really love doing all the cover art from scratch, and creating a “unique” design with custom lettering and illustrations.

Can you tell me about your zine “Rants from a Stranger”?

Rants from a Stranger is a self-published “booklet” inspired by zines, graphic novels, comics and the DIY culture. I like to call it a “typographic novel,” though it doesn’t really qualify as a graphic novel because of its length, and it is more on the zine realm. I love type and lettering and this was the perfect excuse to hand-letter more and produce a periodical self-published piece where I had full control of the creative direction.

I thought it would be fun and different to develop a series of “comics” without illustrations and solely use lettering as the “characters” of the story. So far there are two black and white issues and the third issue (special edition, in color) is coming out in late April as a collaboration with a very talented musician and artist from Venezuela, Mariana Martin Capriles, aka Mpeach. I’m really excited about this issue because of our collaboration, and also because it comes with a paper record player and a flexi EP record of her new song, “Boogaloo Mutante.”

Who are some of your design heroes?

Gerd Leufert, Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt) and Nedo Mión Ferraro were very important figures in my formation as a designer and I still look through their books every time I have a chance. Their students, now well known graphic designers, and former teachers of mine, like Álvaro Sotillo, Gabriela Fontanillas and Carlos Rodríguez have always inspired me through their impeccable work and dedication.

Doyald Young’s lettering work take my breath away, and old school type designers like W.A. Dwiggins and Frederic Goudy are daily inspirations.

Who do you think is doing interesting work right now?

So many brilliant folks out there! Freddy Arenas, my super talented other half, does amazing motion graphics and illustration.

In the cover design world, my co-workers are doing great stuff, all the time. Linda Huang, Joan Wong, Pablo Delcán, Kelly Blair, Megan Wilson, Peter Mendelsund, Carol Carson, Stephanie Ross… From the type, design, art and illustration world Jesse Ragan, Village, Kris Sowersby, OCD, Steve Powers (ESPO), Sergio Barrios, Wayne WhiteCraig Ward, Alex Trochut, Elizabeth Carey Smith, Gustavo Dao, Suzi Sadler, Ryan Bernis, Priyanka Batra, Sasha Prood, Ping Zhu, Victo Ngai, Elana Schenkler, Geoff McFetridge, Nobrow Press, quite a mix…

I could keep going…

What advice would you give a designer starting their career?

Try harder. I think it’s really important to be critical of your own work and be able to accept its faults. Always, strive for more and be hungry. At the same time, embrace your mistakes, learn from them and move on to the next project. I am a big fan of tweaking and fixing til the end of days… but sometimes you just have to learn to let go of projects and keep going. Erik van Blokland said to our Cooper Type class (regarding typeface design), “Release early and release often; recognize what you did wrong in the project and try again.” I remind myself to do that everyday.

I think you should always try to work in what you love and feel passionate about. Even if it means reinventing yourself and making up your own projects in your spare time. This is where the good work will be. Don’t be afraid to make changes and try different things if you need to.

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What’s in your ‘to read’ pile?

I’m currently reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Inter Views by James Hillman. I really want to read Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem, My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt from this past season.

Someday, I’d love to re-read Cortazar’s Hopscotch (Rayuela) and all of Jorge Luis Borges.

The list goes on…

Do you have system for organizing your books?

Ha, no. I used to be very organized and had them alphabetically, color code them, etc… Those days are over… Nowadays, I move them around pretty often and they stay wherever they land.

Do you have a favourite book?

Not really a favourite single book, but I do have an influential shortlist: Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, L’Étranger by Albert Camus, Cuentos de Amor, Locura y Muerte by Horacio Quiroga, Piedra de Mar by Francisco Massiani, Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges, Oscar Wilde’s Collection by Siruela (Biblioteca de Babel).

Thanks Isabel!

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Q & A with Steven Heller, Shadow Type

“Dimensional typefaces toy with human perception, challenging the limits of cognition. Whether framed by a subtle tint or a bold silhouette, in color or in black and white, a shadow adds bulk, enabling the words to rise voluminously from otherwise flat and unmonumental surfaces. Shadow faces are typographic trompes l’œil, fascimiles of real three-dimensional letters and inscriptions in sculpture and architecture… This sculptural essence of shadow type adds not only to the letters’ visibility, but also to their continuing allure.”

Just thinking about how much Steven Heller writes makes me a little giddy. The renowned art director, educator, design historian, and critic provides a steady stream of design commentary in newspaper, magazine and journal articles (not to mention his blog for Print magazine, The Daily Heller). He has authored, co-authored, or edited over 100 books on design, illustration and typography, including the recent Shadow Type: Classic Three-Dimensional Lettering, co-authored with his partner Louise Fili.

Shadow letters started to make an appearance on merchants’ signs in the 18th-century, and were introduced as metal typefaces as early as 1815, but they did not become common in printed text until later in the 19th-century. After a surge in popularity among printers and their clients, type foundries began to provide a wide selection of styles and sizes, and by the late 19th-century shadow wood type was also in demand, coming in extra-large sizes so it could be used outdoors. “Whether custom drawn, or as metal or wood type, shadow letters animated newspaper and magazine mastheads, product labels, and, indeed, all kinds of signs and posters.”

Published in September last year by Princeton Architectural Press, and distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books, I had the opportunity to ask Steven about Shadow Type, his interest in design ephemera, and how he finds time to write.

Do you remember when you first became interested in design?

I was interested in pictures at an early age. I wanted to be like Jules Feiffer, a comics artist. Design came later. I was studying the work of some German satirists, who were also designers.

Did you grow up in a creative household?
Not especially.

Where did you begin your design career?
At 14 I worked for an ad agency doing RussssTogs. Didn’t go well. It took another 3 years before I was hired by an underground paper to do layouts.

When did you first start writing about design history?

When I was at the NY Times as OpEd art director, I did a little bit of writing on those Germans I mentioned. Then it accelerated to writing about publications and other historical themes.

How do you find the time write?

There’s always time.

Do you still get excited when you hold one of your own books in your hands for the first time?
Yes, the thrill is still there. But the high lasts shorter. An addict gets used to the fix and needs another and another. These days, I don’t rip the envelope right open. I let it sit for hours, so I have something to look forward to. Weird, I guess.

Why did you and Louise decide to write a book on classic three-dimensional lettering?

We did the first one on Scripts. We’ve done series before, they didn’t start out that way, but evolved. This evolved into Shadow Type. I have long loved the dimensional, colourful, sculptural letters.

When was the heyday of ‘shadow type’?
19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Its never gone out of style. But the golden age was late 1880s to 1940s.

Why did it become popular?
Dimensionality on flat surface. Our eyes love to be fooled.

Why do you think there is a renewed interest in ornate typography and lettering?
It comes and goes. I see a shift away again. But it has to do with the joy we get from ornament and I think it parallels what goes on in clothing.

Has Louise’s work contributed the revival of decorative type?
Possibly. But she’s not decorative per se. Her type choices are elegant. She’s about precision and aesthetic pleasure.


Do all the examples in the book come from your own collection?

For Scripts and Shadow yes. And for the next one too, that’s Stencil Type.


Why does design ephemera hold such a fascination for you?
I’ve come up with all sorts of reasons, but the all seem bogus. I feel the stuff somehow represents who I am. But I also love being a repository of history. More than that, I cannot say.

Your son, Nicolas Heller, recently made a film about your den called “The Cave.” What was that experience like?
He’s a great talent. I just set him loose. And he made his film. The stuff in that place should be interpreted by others. The juxtapositions of objects and books are at times wonderful.

What’s Nicolas working on now? 
He’s doing a series of documentaries on eccentric New Yorkers called NO YOUR CITY, he’s also filming designers for documentaries produced by Brian Collins.

Do you have a favourite book?
Of my own? I’ve done over 165, but I love Iron Fists. Of other people? There are too many to say.

What books are in your ‘to read’ pile?
I just finished Deborah Solomon’s biography of Norman Rockwell – smartly done. And I finished Year Zero by Ian Buruma about the year 1945, makes the blood chill and boil. On the pile is a thick book about the Beatles. Not sure I’ll get to that.

Is there one book you think all designers should read?

I love Ben Shahn’s The Shape of Content. I also love The Hare with Amber Eyes, but for me, nothing is so essential that I’d stand on the mount and scream that they should read the tablets.

Thank you, Steven!

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Q & A with Jessica Sullivan

If you saw my post on Canadian book covers last year, then you’ve already seen the work of Vancouver-based designer and art director Jessica Sullivan.

I first came across Jessica’s name in 2009. I was trying to convince Peter Cocking, then art director at Douglas & McIntyre, to agree to an interview. Peter, in his way, was having absolutely none of it (and still isn’t, really), but he did suggest that I talk to his senior designer Jessica Sullivan, “the best book designer in the country.” Nothing came of it then, but I did start to pay attention to Jessica’s work — to be honest, it was hard to miss her distinctive style, impeccable typography, and quite how many Alcuin Awards she was winning!

Now, five years after that original conversation with Peter, Jess is now working as a freelance designer and part-time art director for Greystone Books, and still delivering some of the best book covers in the country. In this interview she discusses her work, her career, and offers some advice for designers starting out today.

Jess and I corresponded by email.

When did you first become interested in design?

I took an art class for the very first time in grade ten. My teacher was a graphic designer and one of his clients was A & W. My 15-year-old self thought that was just about the coolest job I could have imagined.

From that day forward any time anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said Graphic Designer. Even though I didn’t really know what that meant.

Did you study design at school?

My determination to be a designer was thwarted by a scholarship to UBC, so after a bit of a detour, I rerouted and attended the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design and received a BA in Communication Design.

Where did you start your career?

I think I started my career at school. I had this perception that landing a design job on my own was going to be impossible (I’m not sure why). I had it in my head that my first job would materialize through one of my instructors. I treated school like a very long job interview, only not so well-dressed. By fourth year an offer came by way of my typography instructor Peter Cocking, then Art Director at Douglas & McIntyre. A position was created for me and the two of us became the new in-house design department. And a book designer was born.

How long were you at Douglas & McIntyre?

9.5 years. During my tenure I married, had babies, designed hundreds of books and experienced a bankruptcy—theirs, not mine.

Has working freelance been very different from working in-house?

In almost every way. I’ve always enjoyed my job, but now I enjoy so many more aspects of it. There is a lot that’s rewarding outside of the work itself. You’re fairly invisible in an in-house scenario. There’s little you can change about process and there is an historical nucleus to the way things are done. It’s a lot simpler to affect change when it’s just me I’m dealing with. I’m pretty easy to work with.

Are you still designing books and book covers?

Yes, absolutely. I just design more than books now.

What have you worked on recently?

I’ve recently designed a book series for MOA [Museum of Anthropology] at UBC, I’m currently working on a visual identity for an editing and writing services company which I’m having a lot of fun with, and I just wrapped up a project for an exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints from the 1800s. I also continue my work with Greystone Books as their art director. A position which adds balance and bit of chaos to my work flow and ensures I leave the house at least once a week. It also guarantees a few good laughs—it’s a great office to work in.

What are your favourite kinds of projects?

I love it when after your first meeting you’ve not only fallen for the project itself (you have a vision for it, you can’t wait to get started, you can SEE how you’re going to make a difference and bring something to this thing) but you’ve also fallen for the people, the client. Every time this happens, and I’ve been very fortunate over the past 14 months as it’s happened quite frequently, I walk away from those meetings like there are tiny, little clouds under my feet.

What kind of books present the greatest creative challenges?

Fiction covers. I don’t know if I hate them or love them. It’s such a hard market, competitive and over saturated, so the cover becomes of utmost importance. It’s usually the most painful genre when designs are rejected, and I’m generally unfazed by rejections at this point in my career, it’s just part of the job. But I’m fairly opinionated regarding fiction and powerless in terms of persuasion, so it can make for a tortured process. And I might be over exaggerating a bit here.

Can you describe your process for designing a book cover?

If it’s fiction, I read the book, otherwise I read the synopsis and familiarize myself with the content and tone. Then I think. That’s probably the most important stage. Generate as many ideas and concepts from all that thinking. Source imagery or create imagery or have imagery created. Add type. Explore, test, judge, select, refine. Judge, select, refine. Judge, select, refine. Sleep. Wake up and see if I still agree with myself. Submit.

What advice would you give a designer starting their career?

1. Be professional at school. Be on time, hand things in by deadline. Design communities are often small. You will encounter your instructors out in the world. They will remember you if you pissed them off with your laziness. They will not hire you.

2. You only get out of school what you put into it. They can’t teach you to be a good designer; that comes from work and practice. Ensure that every instructor you encounter enriches your education—you are paying for it.

3. Continue to grow. If your job becomes boring—challenge yourself. Give yourself personal goals within your projects. Ensure that everything you create is adding to your own personal archive. When you’ve amassed what you need don’t be scared to leave and move on to the next challenge.

Is there a supportive design community in Vancouver?

I’m not really sure. I do feel I am part of a supportive community—although it’s not actually composed entirely (or much at all) of fellow designers. I’ve been told one exists in Toronto, and I have to admit, I am very curious about it all.

Where do you look for inspiration, and who are some of your design heroes?

I try to be aware of my surroundings, to makes connections of all kinds, not just in design. I like old things and new things and mixing the two together. I’m always looking at stuff. Printed stuff: books, magazines, wallpaper, packaging. Moving stuff: movies, documentaries, TV, birds. Invented stuff: art, architecture, interior design, music, fashion. Stuff that just exists: fish—which have the most amazing colour palettes, snow affirms the beauty of white space.

I am a fan of Barbara deWilde, Gabriele Wilson, John Gall, Paul Rand, Charles and Ray Eames, Charley Harper, B. C. Binning, Rex Ray. I’m not sure if any of them ever rescued anyone though.

What books have you read recently?

That’s a hard one. I’ve been so busy lately that I honestly haven’t had time to read anything besides work related matter. I used to read in transit and at night, so I consumed a lot of books on a monthly basis. Now I write proposals and tend to email on the bus rides and research in the evenings and fall asleep before I can finish a page of the book that’s sitting next to my bed, Ingenious Pain. The last book I read that I really devoured was Million Little Pieces which is strange because I almost exclusively read novels.

Do you have a favourite book?

That’s not possible. I can’t even say I have a favourite author. There’s just too many, too much to choose from. And I read all kinds of fiction, some of my favourites: A Spot of Bother Mark Haddon, Tom Bedlam George Hagen, On Beauty Zadie Smith, As I Lay Dying William Faulkner, The House of Mirth Edith Wharton, The Collector John Fowles, The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy Barbara Vine, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh Michael Chabon.

What does the future hold for book cover design?

I don’t really see that much changing, to be honest. Unless we’re no longer allowed to use paper, and we go back to the time where stories are housed in people’s memories. And then I’ll be useless for a number of reasons. I have a terrible memory for that kind of detail.

Thanks Jess! 

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Q & A with Gene Luen Yang

I wouldn’t be surprised if you were feeling a little disillusioned with comics right now — frictionless superhero movies that deliver ever-diminishing emotional returns; ham-fisted editorial decisions; disputes over rights, compensation and artwork; violence; stupidity; institutional misogyny and racism; and generic blandness will do that.

Beyond the multiplexes and controversies, however, it is actually a quite an exciting time to be reading comics.

There are signs — Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples‘ space opera Saga, Hawkeye by Matt Fraction, David Aja and Javier Pulido, and Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo‘s horror-driven Batman spring to mind — that genre comics may still have some life in them.

Classic series and newspaper strips are being properly curated and are more available than before. Under-appreciated artists are being rediscovered.

Alternative cartoonists such as Peter Bagge, Alison Bechdel, Chester Brown, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, Rutu Modan, and Chris Ware are producing some of the best work of their careers. The art of Daniel Clowes and Art Spiegelman is being recognised with gallery exhibitions.

And sitting somewhere between in the alt. auteurs and the superheroes, cartoonists like Emily Carroll, Becky Cloonan, Tom Gauld, Faith Erin Hicks, Hope Larson, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Luke Pearson, Noelle Stevenson — artists who have absorbed a diverse range of influences — are carving out niches for themselves, often combining and subverting genres and styles to produce uniquely personal visions.

It’s in this last, loose group of cartoonists1 — the one between the experimental and the mainstream — that I’d put artist and writer Gene Luen Yang.

Best known for his work on the Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novels, and the critically acclaimed American Born Chinese, Gene’s most recent work is Boxers & Saints, an ambitious two-volume historical graphical novel telling parallel stories of two young on the opposite sides of the Boxer Rebellion. Already shortlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and listed amongst Publishers Weekly‘s best books of the year — it is a remarkably mature, compassionate, and accomplished work that is at times funny, at times tragic, but always very human.

I recently met Gene while he was in Toronto to promote Boxers & Saints. I was impressed by his thoughts on being a cartoonist and on the medium itself, and we spent a good couple of hours talking books, comics, and movies. We have since corresponded by email for this Q & A.

American Born Chinese and Boxers & Saints are distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books, and parts of this interview have appeared previously on the Raincoast blog.

  1. These are, admittedly, all very arbitrary, untidy and personal lists and categorizations — nobody who’s interesting fits exactly.
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Q & A with Luke Pearson

I’ve been a fan of Luke Pearson‘s work since picking up a copy of Hilda and the Midnight Giant from Nobrow Press a year or so ago. The beautiful illustrations, quality printing and oversize format gave it the exotic feel of the comics albums British school kids used to sneak back from vacations in France (and maybe still do?). Despite my immediate sense of nostalgia, the comic itself was fresh, different and delightfully free of cynicism. I read it over and over with my kids, and then savoured it on my own after they were asleep.

Happy to find a kids comic that adults could also love, I quickly went back and found a copy of Hildafolk (recently reissued in hardcover as Hilda and the Troll) and bought Hilda and the Bird Parade as soon as it was published. While seemingly drawing inspiration from Northern European stories and Tove Jansson’s magical Moomin books, Hilda’s world has it’s own, unique mythology — a strange wood man, truculent elves, troll rocks, sea spirits, salt lions, flying furballs, and lonely, ancient giants. The wide-eyed and blue-haired child and her mother are a curious and reassuring modern presence in this old and magical world. The fantastical is everyday to them — something to be fitted around work and school. Their problems are the problems of the real world — where to live, how to make friends with the neighbours, how to do the right thing…

This juxtaposition of the modern and the magical is also evident in Luke’s comics for adults. But where the Hilda comics are unabashedly bright and joyful, the adult comics are filled with melancholy and sadness. Like Kevin Huizenga‘s Glenn Ganges comics, the fantastical in Luke’s adult comics is shadowy, nightmarish, and all the more unsettling for its appearance in mundane, familiar settings. The monsters and ghosts in stories like like You Mustn’t Be Afraid (included in the anthology Nobrow 7: Brave New Worlds), and the full-length graphic novel Everything We Missare the personal demons (sometimes scary, sometimes familiar) of the world weary, not the new friends of a child in unexplored territory. But for all their apparent differences, at their heart the Hilda stories and Luke’s adult comics are fundamentally about the same things: people, relationships, and about understanding one’s place in the world.

I recently spoke to Luke for the Raincoast Blog about ‘The Boy Who Drew Cats,’ his wonderful contribution to the newly published kids anthology Fairy Tale Comics. Here, we talk about his influences, his comics and his book cover illustrations. We corresponded by email.

When did you first start drawing comics?

When I was very young. I think I probably started drawing speech bubbles as soon as I figured out how to draw people. I used to draw comics about a character called Super Rabbit and show it to my grandparents.

Did you always want to be a professional cartoonist?

I probably did at some point when I was a child. It was obviously something I always thought about, but I was only really familiar with the smallest selection of comics and was entirely ignorant to how the industry worked, so it seemed like a crazy, unachievable dream to ever expect to get to that point. I eventually wound up going to university to study illustration and going into that I was prepared to basically just try and be an illustrator and it was only through the process of that that I remembered that comics were something that I still liked doing and that it was actually weird that I wouldn’t be doing them.

What was the inspiration for the Hilda books?

I draw really heavily on Scandinavian folklore (particularly Icelandic and Norwegian) for the Hilda comics. I got hooked on that initially from researching Icelandic folktales for a map project we were set at university. I really liked how strange and low-key they were. Not much happens and then the weirdest thing will happen, but it’s described really plainly and matter-of-factly and then it will end really abruptly. I tried to fuse some of the stuff I’d read for that with memories from an earlier family holiday to Norway which had a big effect on me and set a bunch of ideas in motion that for a long time I had nothing to do with.

The series has drawn comparisons to Tove Jansson beloved Moomin stories. Has Jansson been an influence on your work?

The 1990 tv series was my first exposure and I always felt like it was key in the shaping of my psyche somehow. I came relatively late to discovering the full breadth of what she did. If I had to choose to have an idol, I guess she would be it, maybe. So obviously she is a big influence on me, as a cartoonist, illustrator and a writer. I always feel a bit weird about any comparison though, because I can’t tell if it’s meant kindly or if it’s more like ‘I can see where you steal your ideas’. Hilda was designed very self consciously, at least initially, to resemble a kinder Little My.

Your contribution to Fairy Tale Comics, ‘The Boy Who Drew Cats’, has a similar magical quality to Hilda. What attracted you to the story?

It was actually one of a couple of stories suggested to me by Chris Duffy, who edited the book. I liked how far removed it felt from the kind of Brothers Grimm stories that I generally think of when I think ‘fairytales’. It’s more like a horror story with a lot of weird details that seemed fun to me. I liked the Japanese setting. I was also completely unfamiliar with it so I didn’t have to feel the weight of past interpretations on me as I adapted it.

I love that the child at the centre of ‘The Boy Who Drew Cats’ looks a lot like Harold from ‘Harold and the Purple’ Crayon. Has Crockett Johnson been an influence on your work?

Actually no! I’m not super familiar with Crockett Johnson’s work at all. He actually started off as Charlie Brown and then I pulled his features around a bit.

Do you approach your comics for kids differently from your adult comics?

I think this is the only kids comic I’ve done that isn’t a Hilda comic. Usually I’d point out that I draw my kids comics (Hilda) in a different style to how I tend to draw my adult stuff. I guess really I’m just talking eyes here. Hilda is full colour with big eyes and my other comics tend to be limited colour with dot eyes. This is full colour with dot eyes so I guess it sits in the middle. Less superficially, I’d say I try to be really clear in regards to storytelling and try and wrap things up neatly with my children’s work.

Briefly, could you describe your working process?

I generally draw and ink on paper, scan, colour in photoshop. I switch between brush pens, brushes, fineliners and dip pens. I don’t have any particular paper that I always use. I’m starting to enjoy occasionally inking in photoshop now, which I’m just using a wacom tablet for.

How is illustrating a book cover different from drawing comics?

Other than involving the same technical skills, it’s different in every way. I guess you are kind of trying to ‘tell a story’ with a cover, but really you just want to create an image that’s striking, intriguing, aesthetically pleasing and somehow captures the tone of the book. I’d say it feels a lot easier than a comics page, because you can just spend all your time fine tuning and perfecting this one thing until it’s ready, rather than having to worry about fifteen different images and making sure they all look good and all fit on the page and make sense when read one after the other. That said, it’s a totally different thing and requires different skills.

Are there any books you would love to illustrate?

Watership Down or something by Franz Kafka. I wouldn’t want to do them in the style I draw my comics though. My taste in book covers is not quite in sync with the ones I’ve actually drawn.

What have you read recently?

I just finished reading Tenth of December by George Saunders. I just bought a couple of collections of Michael Dougan comics which I really like.

How did you get involved with Adventure Time?

I got an email asking if I wanted to take a storyboard test, which I took and I guess they liked it. There’s no interesting story there really. I’ve boarded on two episodes so far, ‘Candy Streets’ and ‘Frost & Fire’ and should be doing some more some time soon.

Where do you look for inspiration, and who are some of your cartooning heroes?

I try to just pay attention to things and take everything in as inspiration in some way or another. But you know, I also just look at tumblr and stuff like every one else does. Some of my heroes are Tove Jansson, Chris Ware, Osamu Tezuka, Gene Deitch and Philippa Rice.

Who else do you think is doing interesting work right now?

Loads of people, but the more I list the more I feel like I’m missing out. My favourite cartoonist right now is Anatola Howard.

Have you thought about creating web-comics?

Yes, but I can’t see myself ever having a dedicated site for a specific regularly updated comic. I usually put my shorter comics online if I can and I wish I could do that more often. I can definitely see myself doing a regularly updated thing for a limited period of time at some point.

Do you worry about the future of books and print?

I can’t say it’s ever kept me up at night.

Thanks Luke!

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Q & A with Misha Beletsky, Part Two

In part one of our conversationMisha Beletsky, art director at Abbeville Press, discussed his interest in the work of German-born designer and calligrapher Ismar David, the subject his recent book The Book Jackets of Ismar David, published by RIT Press. In this second and final part of our interview, Misha and talks about his own work as a designer and an art director:

How did you become interested in design?

The father of a boyhood friend in Russia was a book designer. He had a photo lab set up in his closet, took pictures of letters, and pasted them up with rubber cement. Having access to creation of the book, that holy of the holies of the bookish world I grew up in seemed like magic. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. One day I tagged along with this friend to take night classes at the Moscow Printing Institute. Suddenly, I felt it was no longer a world I could enjoy as a guest, but a world I could be a part of. I felt it was not only something I liked doing, but an area where I could make a real difference. When I arrived in the US, one particular image from a RISD catalog influenced my decision to choose this school over others: a photograph of a calligraphy class. The unassuming black-and-white image spoke to me more than all lavish and clever full-color catalogs of other schools not because I wanted to become a calligrapher, but because I knew this was a place that based its design education on a solid ground. The essential training in typography I received at RISD laid the ground for my summer internship with David R. Godine, Publisher in Boston. This small press started out as a letterpress printing shop in a barn and over the years has been responsible for more important books on book design and typography than any single publisher in this country. There I caught the bug of fine printing. I began appreciating printer’s ink, impression, and paper, and there I was indoctrinated about the proper use of old style figures and small caps. I learned to consider all elements of the book as a part of one system where the whole is more than a sum of its parts and each part is integrally related to each other. Empowered by my discovery of the letterpress, I went back to school to spend my Senior year hand-setting metal type, carving woodcuts, and printing my own limited-edition books. My first job after school designing book interiors for Alfred A. Knopf was the best way to apply the ideals of fine printing to real-life trade publishing. Knopf house style had changed little since the heady days of W.A. Dwiggins, George Salter, and Warren Chappell. I explored every nook in the corporate library, taking in every book designed by the best designers of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Their lessons are still with me today.

Could you describe your book cover design process?

Most of the books I design are art books, which usually implies I am responsible for both the cover and the interior design. This means I have a rare privilege of making sure the cover and the interior design agree. I usually start from the inside out: I decide on the interior typography first, and then move on to the jacket. Unlike most trade books, where cover designers are only limited by their imagination and their budget in the choice of the artwork, the cover image for illustrated books usually comes from within the book. I select an image, crop it, and design the typography. This limitation made me keenly aware of how much you can do with type alone and sympathetic to the designers of the past who were able to achieve great results with limited tools.

What do you look for in a designer’s portfolio?

I look for understanding of and an eye for traditional book typography. Only a handful of portfolios out of hundreds I reviewed had it.

Do you see any prevalent trends in contemporary book design?

There is a relatively new trend of purely decorative covers and bindings by Coralie Bickford-Smith and others that seems to be a reaction to the overwhelming number of clever designs. As far as interiors go, by and large, I see a lot of unexciting work of decent quality and very little great work. I keep waiting for a resurgence of good typography, but it has not arrived yet.

What advice would you give a designer starting their career?

Read Ben Shahn’s The Shape of Content. Learn calligraphy, drawing, and printmaking. Learn letterpress printing from metal type. Manual skills cannot be emphasized enough.

Who are some of your design heroes?

Bruce Rogers, the subject of my new book. He had an almost unfathomable sensitivity to typography. In his lifetime he was famous to a point of embarrassment. Today he is hardly ever talked about. Yet, to me he remains the most versatile and the most accomplished practitioner of our craft.

Another name is Vladimir Favorsky, a towering genius of Russian graphic arts, completely forgotten outside of Russia. For many years he taught at VKhuTeMas, the Russian sister-school of the Bauhaus (which evolved into the design department of Moscow Printing Institute where I briefly studied), yet he was in opposition to the Constructivist ideas espoused by most professors there. He developed an original design philosophy of his own that integrated Avant-garde ideas with the traditional craft of wood engraving. Ironically, his fusion of the old and the new may prove more relevant today than the radical rejection of the old by his famous modernist colleagues.

What does the future hold for book cover design?

Who knows? What does the future hold for visual art or for our culture at large? It seems we’ve been living in a cultural twilight zone. We’ve tried Modernism and we came to a logical dead end, we’ve tried revolting against Modernism, and we’ve become tired of that, too. What’s next? I hope we can learn to build on top of what the previous generations learned instead of rejecting whatever the last fashion was and trying to outdo it. In the words of Goethe that Ismar David loved to quote, “What you inherited from your fathers, acquire it to make it your own.”

Thanks Misha! (And I couldn’t resist including this…)

Read part one.

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Q & A with Misha Beletsky, Art Director Abbeville Press, Part One

Misha Beletsky is the art director of New York’s Abbeville Press, an independent publisher of fine art and illustrated books.

Towards the end of last year, Misha was kind enough to send me a copy of his recent book, The Book Jackets of Ismar David, published by RIT Press.

A German-born graphic artist, David worked in Germany and then Jerusalem before moving permanently to the United States to become part of a group of accomplished calligraphers who also worked as book jacket designers in New York in the 1950s. David’s bold and expressive style was informed by a mastery of the typographic tradition (he designed a calligraphic Hebrew typeface called David Hebrew), and he worked for many of leading publishers of the day including Alfred A. Knopf, Harper and Row, Houghton Mifflin, Random House and others.

In this post, the first of a two-part interview, Misha discusses the book and his interest in the work of Ismar David.

When did you first come across the work of Ismar David?

Anyone who reads Hebrew is familiar with David’s work, whether they are aware of it or not: David Hebrew, a font he designed happens to be one of the most ubiquitous Hebrew typefaces for text setting. I was first exposed to his work outside of type design as I researched my article on the history of Hebrew typography around twelve years ago.

What interested you about him?

David’s work is powerful and beautiful, yet little known. He had a rare ability of using traditional skills and historical knowledge to arrive at strikingly contemporary results.

Did David’s work change when he moved to the US?

His work matured and became more diverse, as he grew in his craftsmanship and absorbed many exciting influences of 1950s’ New York design scene. He was working alongside other accomplished calligrapher jacket designers like George Salter, Warren Chappell, Arnold Bank, Phil Grushkin, Charles Skaggs, Oscar Ogg, Jeanyee Wong, and Lili Wronker, among others. They all knew each other and learned from each other’s work.

Do you consider David to be primarily a book designer or a calligrapher?

He was a graphic artist who used calligraphy as a primary means of expression. He was equally comfortable designing book jackets, architectural interiors, logos, advertisements, and monumental inscriptions, depending on the project at hand.

What was special about his Hebrew typeface ‘David’?

It was the first 20th c. Hebrew text type, whose letterforms were not based on an existing typographic model, but found inspiration in historic calligraphic hands. David distilled the idea of the Hebrew letter to its purest form.

How did David’s work differ from his contemporaries Paul Rand and Alvin Lustig?

His work could not be called clever or conceptual. He relied on the sheer power of the letter, shape, and color to create stunning jackets that told the book’s story through a primary visual vocabulary.

Is David’s work still relevant today?

I believe it is. Twenty years into the “conceptual revolution” in our book cover design, the Modernist idiom is getting a bit tired. We are ready for something different. There is a renewed interest in traditional typography and design craftsmanship, and it is here that we could learn a thing or two from David.

Do you think we’re seeing a revival of calligraphy, lettering and hand-drawn type?

Somewhat: if Pinterest stats are any indication, lettering compositions are trending along with pictures of fashionable outfits, cute puppies, and expensive home interiors. It’s not a complete comeback, though. On one hand, a few talented designers like Marian Bantjes and Jessica Hische are enjoying a tremendous degree of success with their decorative lettering work. On the other hand, the work of traditionally trained calligraphers is still in relatively low demand. What seems encouraging, though, is a renewed interest in, and appreciation of, calligraphy as a craft. I would attribute the interest in this and other handicrafts to the backlash against the proliferation of the computer that has left the hand out of the creative process. At the same token, the plethora of visual resources now available on the Internet provides unprecedented access to the rare historical calligraphic books and manuscripts. In this case the same computer is actually helping to make the handicraft popular again.

Thanks Misha.

You can find more images from The Book Jackets of Ismar David on Facebook. Part two of my converation with Misha will be available tomorrow.

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Q & A with P. D. Smith

City A Guidebook for the Urban Age is the fascinating new book by British writer and reviewer by Peter D. Smith. Published by Bloomsbury, it is a wonderfully meandering collection of essays on cultural history of the world’s cities and an exploration of architecture and urban life from the earliest cities in Mesopotamia to the future dystopias of The Sleeper Awakes and Blade Runner.

I first came across Peter via his reviews for The Guardian newspaper and his lively Twitter feed which, if you are interested, provides the curious with steady stream links about books, history, science and architecture of the kind one might expect from another cultural magpie, William GibsonCity was still a work in progress at that point and having followed it’s development over the past couple of years, I was glad to finally have the opportunity to read it last month. It didn’t disappoint.

Peter and I talked by email…

When did you first become interested in writing?

As a child I was always writing stories, usually fantasy or science fiction. When I was about thirteen we had to write a story for school during the summer holiday. Mine was a space opera about bug-eyed aliens on a distant world. By the end of the holidays I had filled a whole exercise book and even designed a cover for it. I doubt my poor teacher read it all. But I got top marks for effort at least.Afterwards the other kids in my class started reading it and passing it around. Then this boy from another class got hold of it. He had close-cropped hair and wore Doc Martens boots. Weedy bookworms like me generally tried to keep out of his way, but one day he stopped me outside the school gates. I thought he was going to hit me. Instead he started talking about my story. He liked it! I was astonished and I’ve never forgotten that moment. It taught me something about writing and its ability to connect with people.

Your previous books are about superweapons and Albert Einstein. Why did you decide to write a book about cities?

My doctorate was about scientific ideas in German literature, from Goethe to Brecht. The biography of Einstein and the cultural history of doomsday weapons grew directly out of my interest in the way science and culture influence each other. But for my next book I wanted to do something a bit different, from the point of view of both subject and style. I like subjects that cross boundaries and, right from the start, I loved the idea of writing a history of cities. It allowed me to explore everything from the technology of cities to the invention of writing and theatre. It also gave me the opportunity to experiment with different narrative structures. The vast scale of the subject meant it was impossible to explore in a straightforward narrative. Eventually I decided to write it as a guidebook to an imaginary Everycity. Of course, this brought its own challenges, but it was also fun. Most importantly, it made the whole project – which is in a sense a survey of civilisation – manageable as well as opening up the idea of the city, both as an idea and as a physical reality.

Is learning more about the subject you’re interested in part of the impulse for your writing?

Absolutely. I love researching a new idea. Writing a book is a bit like juggling with different bits of information, ideas, places, and characters. You have to keep them all up in the air, then gradually bring them down to the ground in some kind of order. It’s always an immense challenge and sometimes you feel you’re not up to it. But it’s a great thrill when you find something new – an idea, a fact, a juxtaposition. That’s what makes it all worthwhile.

Which books most influenced your thinking about cities?

Lewis Mumford’s The City in History was one of the books that inspired me initially. It’s an immensely impressive survey. Similarly impressive in both scale and erudition is Peter Hall’s Cities in Civilisation. The sheer imaginative range of Geoff Manaugh’s writing on architecture and urbanism on BLDGBLOG is also a constant source of inspiration. And, of course, Italo Calvino’s wonderful Invisible Cities was always there in the background. It’s such an evocative piece of writing about cities and the urban experience.

Why do you think there has been renewed interest in urban living in recent years?

In the US, the 2011 census showed that more young people are choosing to live in cities. For the first time in a century, big cities in America are growing at a faster rate than the suburbs. That’s happening elsewhere too. Perhaps this is because, after the recession, people are less inclined, or able, to buy homes and prefer to rent instead. Or it could be that a new, wired generation has rediscovered the joys of urban life: of living somewhere with public transport, where you can experience diverse cultures and lifestyles, and where you can tap into the creative buzz of city life. In the developing world cities are also growing at an unprecedented rate, morphing into megacities of 20 or even 30 million people. They are the largest artificial structures ever built. People are drawn to them as they have always been – to find work, education, health care, or to escape the confined world of the village. As the medieval German saying goes: Stadtluft macht frei – city air sets you free.

The book covers a lot of different topics, but the idea of ‘the city’ is a vast, open-ended subject. Were there things you were sorry to leave out?

Yes, certainly. There were many topics that had to be dropped. They included urban myths, street painters, and secret cities, like the ones built during the cold war. Even without these, the first draft was too long and more material had to be cut. But I’m very happy with the finished text. Sometimes in a book like this, less is more.

One of the more sobering part of the book addresses climate change. But you see cities as part of the solution. Why is that?

The population of the world is rising inexorably and cities are growing larger. We need to reduce the ecological footprint of our cities. This can be done with good planning and the use of cutting-edge technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Cities can be green: they can generate their own energy, they can provide bicycle lanes and efficient public transport, they can even grow some of their food in rooftop greenhouses. Concentrating people in cities is a highly efficient way of supplying large numbers of people with clean water, healthcare and energy. By contrast, suburban living, where everyone drives cars and lives in detachedhouses, is wasteful of scarce resources and is unsustainable as a model for the world as a whole. Although New Yorkers produce many times more greenhouse gasses than those who live in Mumbai, New Yorkers are responsible for only a third of the carbon dioxide of the typical American. City living can certainly be part of the solution to the environmental challenges of the future.

Has new technology changed how we live in cities?

Yes, new technologies are always changing the shape of cities. Think of the automobile. The internal combustion engine has had a huge impact on cities and how we live in them, as did railways and subways. In the future, cities will be more aware of their inhabitants. Surveillance technologies and electronic chips and sensors will pervade the structures and spaces of the city. Buildings and streets will respond to your presence, automatically adjusting things like air temperature and lighting. But no matter how advanced our technology becomes, cities will still have to satisfy the same kind of demands that city dwellers have had for millennia. We are social animals and our greatest cities will always be dynamic centres of work, culture, entertainment, and shopping.

Why do you think Blade Runner’s dystopian portrayal of Los Angeles has become the prevalent cinematic vision of the city of the future? 

It’s true – in modern fiction and film, future cities are usually depicted as dystopias. Blade Runner – one of my favourite films – draws on a rich fictional tradition, including HG Wells’ The Sleeper Awakes and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. But this has not always been the case. In the Renaissance, dreaming up ideal cities seems to have been something of a philosophical game among intellectuals and artists. They wanted to reform society and they believed people could be improved by creating perfect cities. The quest for ideal cities continued among architects and city planners into the twentieth century. But writers and filmmakers became more pessimistic about the urban future. Today these dystopian visions have become something of a cliché. People are no longer fleeing the city as they were in the second half of the twentieth century. Maybe the time is ripe for a new idealism about the urban future. As Calvino said, ‘With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed…’.

Do listen to music while you write? What did you listen to writing City?

Yes, I do usually listen to music, both while reading and writing. If I’m writing non-fiction it tends to be classical music, such as Mozart or Bach, especially the cello suites played by Paul Tortelier, which I really love. But it depends on my mood. Sometimes I’ll choose something by Michael Nyman, Keith Jarrett or Brian Eno’s Apollo soundtrack, which is one of my favourites. If I’m writing fiction then it can be anything from Radiohead or Bjork, to Pink Floyd or Talking Heads.

What books have you read recently?

Fiction: Balzac’s Old Man Goriot, Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker, and Sam Thompson’s Communion Town. Non-fiction: Taras Grescoe’s Straphanger, Roger Crowley’s City of Fortune, and Man Ray’s Self-Portrait.

Do you have a favourite book?

Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan. Gormenghast is such a powerful imaginary architectural space – a kind of Gothic megastructure. It’s a remarkable creation.

What are you working on right now?

A new non-fiction book about the city of crime. It’s still in its early stages but I’m enjoying it immensely. It’s a wonderful excuse to watch film noir and to read lots of great crime fiction.

Are you concerned about the future of books and book reviews?

Not really. The world of publishing – both of books and newspapers – is certainly changing. I’m writing this on my new iPad which I’ve bought mostly in order to be able to read e-books. I’ve run out of shelf space in my house, so I’m going to expand my library into the digital realm. I’ll always love paper books, just because that’s the technology I’ve grown up with. But a new generation will grow up using e-readers and they’ll see (and read) things differently. I think people will always want to read book reviews in newspapers, whether they are on paper or online. But now book lovers also read and write book blogs and they want to discuss what they’re reading on Twitter. Once if your book didn’t get reviewed in the press that was probably the end of the story. Now a book can become a bestseller because enough people rave about it online. Clearly there are major challenges facing publishers, especially regarding piracy and the pricing of books in an age when many people seem to think they should be free. There’s no doubt it’s a tough time to be making a living as a writer! Plus ça change…

Thanks Peter!

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Q & A with Barbara deWilde

It would be hard to overstate the impact of Barbara deWilde on contemporary book cover design. Along side Carol Devine Carson, Chip Kidd and Archie Ferguson, Barbara’s designs not only defined the bold, visual aesthetic now commonly associated with Knopf, but helped reinvent American book cover design in the 1990’s.

Barbara left book publishing in 2000 to become the design director of Martha Stewart Living — where she successfully implemented a redesign of the magazine (which gave the world the Hoefler Frere-Jones font Archer, thank you very much) — but returned to Knopf  seven years later and created more characteristically distinctive book cover designs, including the jacket for the Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. And yet, not resting on her laurels, Barbara recently changed direction once more. Now studying interaction design full-time at the School of Visual Arts, it seemed the perfect time to look back at Barbara’s work as a book cover designer and to talk to her about what’s next…

Barbara and I corresponded by email.

Do you remember when did you first become interested in design?

I wanted to be an artist, but my parents forbid me to pursue art as a major. My act of defiance was to be an Education major, but to take as many art classes as my schedule could hold. I was taking a Ceramics class and the work area was in an open yard beneath the Graphic Design studio. As I worked into the night, I saw that the lights were always on, in fact, they were never turned off, even long into the night. I had to find out what they were doing up there…

You’re an established designer; why did you decide to go back to school?

I was a bit embarrassed to make this move back to school, but now I can honestly say it was the best thing that I could have done for myself as a designer. In fact, I can’t tell you the number of people who have been enquiring about how to make a similar move. Two years ago I wanted to make the move to working digitally, but there was a barrier to doing this professionally. I’m at too high a level in my design to be be paid to learn. I could have approached the shift by taking on an interactive project and figuring out the digital component like most autodidacts, but I found that I didn’t even know the language of software creation. There is no singular programming language, there’s no silver bullet…learn this software and you’ll understand all. The landscape is changing all the time. I spoke to a lot of people in the digital publishing world and made a list of skills that I would have to acquire. I found that some of the skills could be acquired through continuing education, and some were available online, but most were not available unless you entered a program. There are only a handful of Interaction Design programs in the U.S. and 2 are in New York. I thought if I took off for 2 years and got the degree I would have everything in one place and also get that piece of paper (like in the Wizard of Oz) that attests that I know this field. I’ve never had a graduate degree, so I jumped.

What interests you about Interaction Design?

I find it very humbling. You are designing with the medium of human behavior. As an interaction designer one needs to be more observant and less dictatorial, but most importantly it requires a methodical approach to design. I am extremely intuitive. In the past I have found my way to a design solution by feeling it. The intuitive approach is fine if you work primarily with yourself or with one other person. When you work on building a service, a website, let’s say, or an interactive mobile product, you are working with a team of people. You need a common language, models, and writing skills. The collaborative nature of the work and the relentlessness of content and tasks makes an intuitive approach, if not obsolete, at least secondary.

Are you still designing book covers?

Yes, I love them. I hope I can still work on a few every year. Now, they are my guilty pleasure.

Could you describe how you approach a new design project?

I read whatever I’m given. I try to understand what the usual expectation for a book in the genre is and ditch it…or try my best to stay miles away from it. I don’t start working at my desk until I have some model in my head of what the book is going to look like. I usually make a thumbnail sketch which is totally unrecognizable to anyone but me.

What are your favourite projects to work on?

I like anything that’s well written. I can tell you what I don’t like to work on…anything in the category of “chick lit.” I’m not great at thrillers, but I like working on them occasionally.

How is your approach to art direction different from your own design process?

I art direct projects that I understand, but that I don’t have an aptitude to design. I’m not an illustrator or a photographer, but I do both sometimes. When a book requires a real skill set, I love to hire people. I think an art director is most helpful when they have a vision, can communicate it, and give feedback. Otherwise, they’re useless in the role.

What do you look for in a designer’s portfolio?

Life is boring, make my day… show me something that I wish that I had created. I’d rather see three drop dead great pieces than a couple of great ones and then fifteen mediocre things. It makes me question which designer I’m going to get when I hire you, the great one or the middle-of-the-road one.

Do you see any prevalent trends in contemporary book design?

There’s a lot of illustration now, a lot of charm. I don’t see much ugly stuff, it’s all very masterful. I like ugly, raw work.

What challenges do book designers face currently?

Publishing execs are always grumbling about not making enough money, but lately I think they really believe it. The economics of the publishing model are being challenged by the internet and that turns publishers from idealists to technocrats. That downward pressure always hurts production and design. In addition, whenever a publishing house becomes risk averse, their designers’ choices are limited.

Do women designers have the same creative opportunities as their male colleagues?

Absolutely not…nor do their female writing counterparts. Titles are assigned by the vision of the art director. Usually there is a gender mapping… girl book: girl designer. The publicity budgets are smaller for female writers as are the print runs and the reviews. Meg Wolitzer called it “The Second Shelf.”

What advice would you give a designer starting their career?

At this point, a design student has software and the world has problems…go! There has to be a pretty compelling reason to work for someone else. I would encourage designers to be entrepreneurial.

Where do you look for inspiration, and who are some of your design heroes?

I have print design heroes, like Peter Saville, Francesco Franchi, and Yomar Augusto, and interaction design heroes like Nick Felton and the guys who started Kickstarter: Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler.

What books have you read recently?

I just finished Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (which I loved) and now I’m reading a book published in 1883 on making candy. It’s called the Frye’s Practical Candy Maker. The stack near my bed has the Steve Jobs biography, Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin, the new Richard Ford, and Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

Do you have a favourite book?

My last favourite book always changes. Right now it’s a three way tie between Wolf Hall; Blood, Bones, and Butter; and Olive Kitteridge. My favourite book of all times is Suttree by Cormac McCarthy.

What is ‘What the Book’?

WhattheBook.org is a website that was made in conjunction with the last exhibition at the AIGA of 50 Books/50 Covers. The show had been an annual destination for the best of book and book jacket design but has ended. The AIGA reasoned that the show was no longer relevent, that book design is easily curated and shared on the internet through various blogs, and that it only served the New York elite not the wider national membership.

Within the AIGA gallery I created a 12 foot wide book shelf that allowed visitors to shelve a book, essentially “vote,” for how they feel about the shift in books from physical objects to digital. A red book meant that you agreed and a black book meant that you disagreed. An example of one of the statements is “I silently judge people by their bookshelves.” Agree or disagree. The website runs through the same list of statements and you can vote online. The last part asks the visitor to define what “book” means now that the physical constraints don’t always apply.

We’ve collected nearly 1700 definitions and I’m in the midst of trying to make a visualization of them… and a part 2 to the website. It was the perfect transition project from my old world of book jacket design to interaction design.

What does the future hold for book cover design?

I’m a pragmatist. James Bridle describes the book not in its physical model (pages or no pages) but in its temporal model. What that means is that a book functions first as an advertisement , second as a reading experience, and third as a souvenir. Now eBooks make lousy advertisements, so-so readings experiences, and lousy souvenirs. But some publishers are now selling nearly 60% of each title in eBook form.

So, despite the flaws, people are opting for price and convenience. As a designer, I would ask how my work functions within this model and if it doesn’t how could it in the future? I answered the question by leaving print to learn digital design. I felt there were more creative opportunities elsewhere. (I know I didn’t answer the question.)

Thank you, Barbara!

The Assault on Reason

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