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Tag: chin-yee lai

Book Covers of Note, September 2022

Busy month. Lots of book covers. Gotta go…

Barred by Daniel S. Medwed; design by Chin-Yee Lai (Basic Books / September 2022)

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / September 2022)

Rodrigo Corral also designed the cover of Ling Ma’s previous novel Severance.

Canción by Eduardo Halfon; design by Alban Fischer (Bellevue Literary Press / September 2022)

Drive by James Sallis; design by David Litman (Poisoned Pen Press / September 2022)

I was just talking about this book — how it is a near perfect thriller, but also great for dudes who don’t read a lot of fiction — so I was happy to see it’s been given a new lick of paint. And pink covers are, as I keep saying ad nauseam, a thing…

Fingers Crossed by Miki Berenyi; design by Paul Palmer-Edwards photo Jurgen Ostarhild (Nine Eight Books / September 2022)

I’m including this because of the beautiful photo (with a colour palette remarkably on trend in 2022) and my inevitable teenage crush on indie style icon Miki from Lush.

I Want to Keep Smashing Myself Until I Am Whole by Elias Canetti, edited by Joshua Cohen; design by Alex Merto; illustration Ian Woods (Picador USA / September 2022)

This collage is incredible.

A Girlhood by Carolyn Hays; design by Mel Four (Blair / September 2022)

Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan; design by John Gall (New Directions / September 2022)

Lessons by Ian McEwan; design by Suzanne Dean; illustration by Tina Berning (Jonathan Cape / September 2022)

Modern Fables by Mikka Jacobsen; design by Natalie Olsen (Freehand Books / September 2022)

Perish by Latoya Watkins; design by Grace Han (Tiny Reparations / August 2022)

Poūkahangatus by Tayi Tibble; design by Linda Huang; art by Simone Noronha (Knopf / July 2022)

Sacrificio by Ernesto Mestre-Reed; design by Dana Li (SoHo Press / September 2022)

This reminded me Peter Mendelsund‘s Amerika cover for Schocken back in the day. But, as is the norm around here, the two covers do not actually look that much alike side by side…

Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / September 2022)

We Spread by Iain Reid; design by Chelsea McGuckin (Scout Press / September 2022)

Are letters growing roots a mini-thing?

Worn Out by Alyssa Hardy; design by Emily Mahon; embroidery and dyeing by Alex Stikeleather (New Press / September 2022)

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Book Covers of Note, October 2020

As it is almost the end of October this is going to be my last monthly round-up for 2020. I will endeavour to put together a post on the book covers of year soon, but I am sure a lot of great work skimmed under my radar, so designers please drop me a line if I have missed a cover (or two!) you really loved working on (the book has to have been published this year), especially if it was for an independent or university press. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this month’s selections.

The Acrobats of Agra by Robin Scott-Elliot; design by Holly Ovenden (Everything with Words / October 2020)

The Age of Skin by Dubravka Ugresic; design by Jack Smyth (Open Letter / November 2020)

Always Brave Sometimes Kind by Katie Bickell; design by Tree Abraham (Touchwood Editions / September 2020)

Anger by Barbara H. Rosenwein; design by Alex Kirby (Yale University Press / July 2020)

Be My Guest by Priya Basil; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / November 2020)

Cesare by Jerome Charyn; design by Elsa Mathern (No Exit Press / November 2020)

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata; design by Luke Bird (Granta / September 2020)

Hitler and Stalin by Laurence Rees; design by David Pearson (Viking / October 2020)

The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada; design by Janet Hansen (New Directions / October 2020)

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher; design by Chelsea McGuckin (Saga Press / October 2020)

Infrastructures of the Apocalypse by Jessica Hurley; design by Matt Avery / Monograph Studio (University of Minnesota Press / October 2020)

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab; design by Will Staehle (Tor / October 2020)

Kreminology of Kisses by Barbara Bleiman; design Alex Kirby (Blue Door Press / November 2020)

They’re really not all that alike (it’s funny how memory constantly plays this trick on me), but the colour palette and the typographic approach of Alex’s cover reminded me Luke Bird’s 2017 cover for Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar:

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam; design by Sara Wood; art ‘Night Swimming’ by Jessica Brilli (Ecco / October 2020)

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow; design by Lisa Marie Pomilio (Redhook / October 2020)

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark; design by Henry Sene Yee (Tor / October 2020)

Selected Poems of John Berryman edited by Philip Coleman and Calista McRae; design Jaya Miceli (Belknap Press / October 2020)

The Sun Collective by Charles Baxter; design Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / November 2020)

Talking Animals by Joni Murphy; design by Na Kim; photograph by KOEKKOEK (FSG / August 2020)

Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify by Carolyn Holbrook; design by Kimberly Glyder (University of Minnesota Press / July 2020)

Watch Over Me by Nina Lacour; design by Samira Iravani; illustration by Pippa Young (Dutton / September 2020)

Interestingly, two previous covers designed by Samira for Nina Lacour titles have featured illustrations by Adams Carvalho.

Worked Over by Jamie K. McCallum; design by Chin-Yee Lai (Basic Books / September 2020)

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Signature Shakespeare Illustrated by Kevin Stanton

Freelance illustrator and paper artist Kevin Stanton recently contacted me about his book illustrations for the new Signature Shakespeare editions of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth.

Art directed by Ashley Prine at Sterling Publishing, and with additional typography by the immensely talented Chin-Yee Lai, both books have laser-cut covers, as well as five laser-cut interior illustrations per book, and more than 30 other illustrations.

The results are beautiful and the project sounded like fascinating undertaking, so I thought I would ask Kevin a little more about it.

We corresponded by email.

How did the project come about?

Two years ago, at the very beginning of my foray into freelancing and just a month after graduating from Pratt, I received an unsolicited email from Pamela Horn, a Editorial Director at Sterling Signature. It turns out that a higher-up in the company had seen my work at Pratt’s Annual Pratt Show and passed my portfolio on to her!

After we met a few times, she mentioned that she’d been looking to do a project with a paper artist, and that when the right one came along she would let me know. Initially this had meant a series of Classics book covers, but that fell through. Nine months after our first interview, I got the call — Pam wanted to do a series of Shakespeare plays, starting with Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, each with a cover and fifteen plates! And that was a dream job right there! And after some discussion with my Art Director, Ashley Prine, it got even better, even more unreal: today it is a hardcover book with a laser-cut cover, five interior two-layer laser-cut illustrations, and almost forty printed spots, spreads, act openers and motifs. And my name on the cover to boot!

How did you approach such a big project? 

The process was interesting to figure out. After hand-cutting a great deal of the book, we realized that scans of the pieces didn’t look good and there was no quick-fix for turning them into vectors. Enter my friend and assistant, Victoriya Baskin. Since my sketches before I cut are like maps of everything (I don’t freehand anything), she was able to vector it all together so that we had a product that could be printed on the pages and sent to the laser-cutter with clean, expert lines! And the work can be edited, which was our primary concern with paper.

How you feel about the final results?

It’s been an absolute dream. As a young illustrator, and one that works in paper, I couldn’t have hoped for a better display of my work than these books. I am so happy with them, although seeing them on the shelves in a book store is the most surreal experience for me. It’s a privilege to work with my entire team, and an honor to have been a part of such a phenomenal production! Much Ado about Nothing and Hamlet are next in line to be published in November!

Thanks Kevin!

You can see more of Kevin’s work on these books on his blog.

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