issue six – fall/winter 2016 Editor Eric C. Wilder Cover Design Wirdy Hamidy Article Contributors Susanna Baird, Kerry Squires, Nuria Rodríguez Copyright on book design images are held by respective designers and publishers All other content © Spine Magazine 2016 www.spinemagazine.co.uk hello@spinemagazine.co.uk Published in Rochester, NY
S P I N E M AG A Z I N E issue 6
Contents
Welcome in this issue
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Fiction Showcase your covers
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Non-fiction Showcase your covers
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Student Showcase your covers
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Interview: Anna Morrison by eric c. wilder
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Space is Scary by kerry squires
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Designing for Celebrity by susanna baird
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Unrequited Love: The Ill-fated Affair between Illustration and Adult Fiction by nuria rodrĂguez
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Contributor Bios see who we are
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Eric C. Wilder
Welcome in this issue
Welcome to another issue of Spine. I hope you enjoy what we have put together for you. We talked to designer Anna Morrison about her creative process. Susanna Baird discusses designing book covers for celebrity. Kerry Squires has a comparative review of horror genre covers, and Nuria Rodríguez looks at the ill-fated affair between illustration and adult fiction. The cover for this issue was designed by Wirdy Hamidy. The image is a love letter to “Getting so caught up in a story when reading a book.” "I remember in my pre-teens I was reading a mystery-crime themed book that is thick as a brick, snuggling in between sheets getting myself ready for bed…This illustration represents that.” Wirdy Hamidy’s work can be viewed at www.wirdyhamidy.com 7
Fiction Showcase
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The Mothers
brit bennett R Design by Rachel Willey
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Cannibals in Love: A Novel mike roberts R Design by Na Kim
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Tales of the Peculiar ransom riggs R Design by Andrew Davidson
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The Wangs vs. the World jade chang R Design by Kimberly Glyder
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Little Nothing
marisa silver R Design by Rachel Willey
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Carousel Court
joe mcginniss jr. R Design by Ben Wiseman
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Dr. Knox
peter spiegelman R Design by Oliver Munday
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Black
fleur ferris R Design by Christabella Designs
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Reputations
juan gabriel vรกsquez R Design by Alex Merto
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Non-fiction Showcase
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Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City matthew desmond R Design by Jake Nicolella
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The Finer Things: Timeless Furniture, Textiles, and Details christiane lemieux R Design by Ian Dingman
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Ecotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice martin jordan & joe hinds R Design by Kerry Squires
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I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual luvvie ajayi R Design by David Shoemaker
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When in French: Love in a Second Language louren collins R Design by Evan Gaffney
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Writing In Collaborative Theatre-Making sarah sigal R Design by Kerry Squires
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Go-Getters
This issue welcomes the submissions from two designers at the beginning of their careers. Top: Positive Negative, Sam Watson Bottom: Hitman Anders and the Meaning of it All, Vyki Hendy Sam Watson’s work on Positive Negative earned her a Silver ADDY from the American Advertising Federation, national judging. The image for the cover was created with acrylic paint. In her words, "The top of the shape is clean and graphic, representing the positive part of Positive Negative, whereas the bottom breaks the circle and smudges to emulate the negative portion." Since graduating with a degree in photography, Vyki Hendy has developed an interest in the world of book design and has been working on acquiring the necessary skills.
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Eric C. Wilder
¶ Interview: Anna Morrison
what was your path to becoming a book cover designer? I studied Illustration at Camberwell College of Art after graduating I had to figure out a way to make some cash. I didn’t have the patience (or talent) to pursue a career as an illustrator; I remembered one of my tutors saying I might like working in publishing due to my love of reading so I contacted a few publishing art directors for a work placement and was delighted to have a bit of time at Penguin Books design dept. I loved being there and experiencing the process of designing book covers, I think that bit of work experience helped me to get a job as junior designer at Random House. can you explain your creative approach when taking on a new project? That’s one of the things I love about designing book jackets, every job is different. It helps to read the book (obviously) and
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from there I tend to sketch a few ideas down; not necessarily anything visual I’ve remembered from the text, sometimes an idea just comes through the narrative, they don’t necessarily emerge whilst reading, they tend to come when I’m thinking about it afterwards. I often go back and look at my initial sketches and wonder what on earth I was thinking then try a few more concepts and start playing around on Photoshop until it all comes together or not…send it off and hope for the best! I feel the job of a book cover designer is to translate the text to pique people's interest to pick it up to read, it can be literal but I think a cover is more interesting if it's ambiguous. That’s a unique quality of the job; that there are (usually) no guidelines, it's just what feels right for the book. do you have a favorite project in particular? what about that experience made it unique? I really loved working on The Drowning of Arthur Braxton. It was a repackage of a book that came out a couple of years ago and had a kind of cult following. The author, Caroline Smailes, was just so lovely about the new cover. It's their labour of love, so to make an author happy is just the best! And I got to draw some naked people, that was a unique experience! what aspect of book cover design do you find most compelling? I love all the reading I have to do… and reading books I wouldn’t normally have picked up myself and also finding out weird facts/unless bits of knowledge especially when working on non-fiction books.
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what is your design rationale for the cover of laia jufresia’s umami? I loved working on this book too. It had a completely different cover initially but the art director, James Jones, suggested we go down a more illustrated route. Umami is a story of the troubled lives of a small community in contemporary Mexico as they go through various stages of grief, it’s a dark novel but with humor too. I researched Mexican art, type and pattern (I find Pinterest is good for this) The character Ana surrounded by the plants she grows in the courtyard of where all the characters live, it's the place that connects all the people in the book and the garden she grows is a sign of hope and that felt pertinent to the book. what is your favorite cover that you did not design? Oh wow there are just too many to mention. I loved Jamie Keenan’s cover for The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, the way the type interacts with the image is just beautiful. I think The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund designed by Peter Mendelsund / Oliver Munday is great. It just looks so unsettling it gives an immediate reaction.
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Kerry Squires
Space is Scary
The quiet, the unpredictable, the invisible; why is the unknown so terrifying? Is it that in human morality we consider but don’t ever know ‘life after death’? The notion that maybe we are left with a blank space after we pass? The shock of nothing? No visible horizon to balance ourselves on?
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Space often leaves us wondering ‘what’s next?’ The possible impending doom of a new chapter? The deathly quiet ambience of, well, nothing. As humans (and seemingly the most intelligent species on Earth), we continue to try and relate our existence to space. It can be seen as the ultimate creator of life and we continue to question why we’re here, and how to beat the metaphorical clock. It’s scary; the idea of death, the idea of the end, the idea of no existence. And this is why space is so incredibly powerful. It’s loud, so vast, that we can’t even begin to comprehend it. We become confused by it, we can’t predict what’s next, if, anything at all. To me, the idea of space is the strongest asset a cover designer can have when designing for the horror genre. I don’t want to be able to predict the narrative. I want to digest a subtle hint of the story, feel scared not knowing what’s next, what my impending doom might be. I want to feel uncomfortable about the hum of nothingness. White noise encapsulated on a single piece of paper. Here are some examples of cleverly crafted horror covers:
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A Clockwork Orange, 1962 W. W. Norton & Co. 54
A Clockwork Orange, designed by Barnbrook Studio 55
Psycho, 2010 The Overlook Press 56
Psycho, designed by Jon Gray 57
Jaws, 1974 Bantam 58
Jaws, designed by Tom Lenartowicz 59
Dracula, 1899 Doubleday & McClure 60
Dracula, designed by Steve St. Pierre 61
The covers on the right encapsulate the feeling of horror in its purest form; suspense, loneliness, quiet (but not too quiet!). Unpredictable, the slight shadows give a sense of being watched. It’s amazing how a large amount of space can make somebody feel completely vulnerable. These covers all prove that so much more can be achieved in modern horror through a clever, poignant use of white space. Many horror novels decide to throw absolutely everything at the cover, and although this sometimes works, more often than not it will end up looking repetitive, boring and unauthentic, especially in our modern landscape. The excitement of horror is lost; which is a real shame given the scope of the genre.
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Space is scary.
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Susanna Baird
Designing for Celebrity
We know our celebrities. We watch them onscreen. We follow them online. We know what they eat for lunch, we know the names of their pets, we know for whom they're voting. We know them. Or at least, we know their public personas, their brands. Designing a book cover for a title written by a celebrity involves not only the usual herculean task of transforming a complex universe — that of the book — into a single powerful image, but also grappling with a person readers think they already know.
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Modern Romance, Designed by Jay Shaw 65
Jay Shaw, who made a name for himself designing movie posters and album covers and now serves as brand director for Austinbased Mondo, created the book covers for Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance and Jessi Klein's You'll Grow Out of It. He thinks that, while a celebrity's image can obscure the purpose of a film or other fictional work, "with an autobiographical book cover the focus needs to be on the author." The author is the purpose, the book's central concept. The design challenge becomes how best to represent the celebrity in a way that not only stays true to their well-developed public persona, but also riffs on that persona in a way that gets at what they're expressing in the book. Ansari's book Modern Romance focuses on 21st century courtship. The comedian covers the topic during his stand-up and on his show, but the book isn't a straightforward comedy read or memoir. Working with social scientist Eric Klinenberg, Ansari gathered mounds of research and presented it alongside his humorous observations. He took a similarly thorough approach to the book cover.
‘We went back and forth on at least two dozen concepts. I had the idea of using a photo of him based on this great photo I’d seen of a young Stanley Kubrick holding a camera.’ —Jay Shaw, Brand Director, Mondo
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“When I say a client 'collaborated,' what usually I mean is they gave me notes," Shaw said. "When we were working on the book cover he’d call or text or send e-mails full of incredible reference material he ran across. We went back and forth on at least two dozen concepts. I had the idea of using a photo of him based on this great photo I’d seen of a young Stanley Kubrick holding a camera." Ansari replaced Kubrick, the cell phone replaced the camera, and the photographer, Ruvan Wijesooriya, came up with the idea of using hearts. Ansari and Shaw spent another week poring over fonts (final choice: Avant Garde), and the cover said what it needed to say. "Aziz standing there, blinded by false notions of love and romance, trying to navigate his landscape (an iPhone) pretty well communicates what you can expect to find inside the book," Shaw said.
R Like Shaw, the designer of Amy Schumer's "The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo" twisted the typical celebrity-photo book cover into a new shape. Simon & Schuster Senior Art Director Lisa Litwack has created covers for a number of esteemed authors, including Stephen King and Catherine Coulter. She's a huge Schumer fan, and was excited to learn Simon & Schuster's imprint Gallery Books was publishing the comedian's title. Working with the book's publisher and editor, Litwack came up with concepts that were, like Schumer, funny. However, they
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failed to reflect the honesty and bravery found inside the book. Going back and forth with Schumer and photographer Mark Seliger, the team ultimately landed on the now-iconic cover. "I feel it reflects a vulnerable but strong image of Amy which represents her brand and her book perfectly," Litwack said.
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‘I feel it reflects a vulnerable but strong image of Amy which represents her brand and her book perfectly.’ — Lisa Litwack, Senior Art Director, Simon & Schuster
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, (back cover and spine on left, front cover on right)
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Designed by Lisa Litwack
You'll Grow Out of It, Designed by Jay Shaw 70
Focusing on the author doesn't necessarily mean including a celebrity-caliber photo. Comedian and "Inside Amy Schumer" writer Jessi Klein found Jay Shaw's name on the jacket of Ansari's book, and asked him to work on the cover of her collection of personal essays. The two talked on the phone and shot e-mails back and forth, initially aiming for a more conceptual piece that illustrated "the juxtaposition between what girls and women in our country are 'supposed' to experience in their lives and what they really do," explained Shaw. This led Shaw down several dead-end paths. He took a classic 1950s female silhouette and broke it: too goofy. He tried a collage made from fashion magazine clippings: oddly violent. He found doll molds at a craft store: big "nope." (He gave the doll molds to his daughter, who painted them silly colors and set them on fire in the backyard.) Finally they talked old photos, and Jessi found the one from first grade. Using that as a base, Shaw "went to town on the type treatment."
R In all three instances, the book cover designers ultimately chose a traditional celebrity-memoir design route, prominently featuring the author's image. But each designer took the concept in a different and unique direction, transcending clichĂŠ and expressing both the author's well-known persona and the new creation that is the book.
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Nuria RodrĂguez
Unrequited Love
the ill-fated affair between illustration and adult fiction
Dickens had Cruikshank and Phiz, Wilde had Beardsley, Carroll had Tenniel. It is hard to imagine some of our classic books deprived of their counterpart inside illustrations. Sometimes treading lightly introducing the chapters, sometimes gloriously occupying the full width of pages, these etchings and engravings now live in our cultural memory. They have become intrinsic to the books they once embellished, and they still have the power to influence contemporary visions of their stories.
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Oliver Twist, Illustration by George Cruikshank
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S'alome, Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley
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The custom of illustrated books during the 18th and 19th centuries is well known and studied. Serialized novels by their own nature appeared in newspapers and since periodicals used caricaturists it was only logical that the same illustrators would be employed to enhance these new stories. Somehow, as time passed, the public shifted their interest away from figurative art and into abstract and more conceptual artworks, and a substantial shift also occurred in publishing. The public taste for illustrated works was changing and publishers slowly narrowed the realm of illustrative work to that of children’s literature. Certainly illustration did not disappear completely from the adult domain, non-fiction and scientific books retained its use for explanatory purposes; and as may be expected, it thrived in the ubiquitous cookery book, since instructions, it seemed, were what illustration was intended for. However, the narrative book, the novel, and even the short story were compelled to abandon the use of complementary visuals if they were to be taken seriously. Illustration in fiction didn’t completely vanish, but its application was reduced and its nature mistrusted: cultivated literature did not need accompanying visuals. A pragmatic perspective – and a short-sighted view of the role of illustration – believed that adults did not need imagery to reinforce or clarify the meaning of the words. The world of advertising and commercial art practically monopolized the use of illustration during the early 20th century, and this association with consumer culture forced its depart from the adult literary landscape. Illustration in fiction books, as may be expected, remained on their covers, the section of the book directly associated with marketing purposes and sales. Inside the adult fiction book, however, it was a different story: illustration survived by hiding at the end of short
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stories, shyly peeking from above chapters and lurking on the endpapers. It found its place dispersed amongst the poetry and the less conventional short stories, the luxury editions and the gift volumes of classic reproductions. It seems though, that recently, illustrative content is daring to show itself in its full glory again. Refusing to be relegated to a mere description it is becoming a semantic element, being one with the story and taking its rightful place as a storytelling device. The recent revival of the graphic novel may have helped in changing the public taste and eased the way for illustrators to reignite their love affair with adult fiction. A new breed of independent publishers has also come to the forefront – they share the common vision of a reader that can be persuaded to love illustration within narrative fiction – and seem to be embracing the moment. They also share a broad view of the applications of pictorial elements within adult fiction, and of the role of the illustrator, artist and designer within the publishing process. For these publishers – the likes of Four Corners Books and Visual Editions – the book seems to be understood as a cooperative project where the value of the illustrative and pictorial work is of equal weight to that of the written word: together they create the story, together they make the book as an object. It’s no coincidence that these publishers have mostly opted for classic novels to be treated in a visual manner – such as Dracula, Vanity Fair, Madame Bovary or Don Quixote. Four Corners Books created their collection of Familiars where various artists interpreted a classic story of their choice in a nod to original illustrated fiction. Cleverly, by adapting classic
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Illustration by John Tenniel
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texts in the public domain they reduce greatly their costs; this allows them to invest in the production values of the publication, take risks with illustrative styles, and attract an audience that in most cases is already acquainted with the texts and are intrigued by their new visual approach. Visual Editions – proudly displaying their slogan “great looking stories” – also started by adapting Tristam Shandy (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman) and have more recently ventured in reinterpreting Don Quixote (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha). Their visual adventures are not restricted to interior illustration of texts: the words themselves become illustrative material as they pirouette through the pages, are irreverently sliced, folded and in some cases even disappear. The standard publisher is still unconvinced about the use of illustration within books; there is unease about the mistrust of the serious reader, and the possible financial risk by incurring costs that may not necessarily enhance the reading experience. Publishing is after all a business. However, the scene seems to be changing. As the advances in digital publishing are bringing new forms of storytelling through visual experimentation and interaction – such is the case of Visual Editions’ Editions at Play or Sudden Oak’s story apps – the printed book becomes more objectified, more precious, more unnecessary, and therefore gains status as a luxury object. Will we see a return to heavily illustrated novels? Probably, but this may take the same form as many luxury publications that already exist: hardbacks aimed at the Christmas market, gifts for special occasions, collector editions. How many more lavishly illustrated and decorated editions of Dickens’ and Austen’s stories can the market possibly admit? How many more does it actually need?
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What is really fascinating is to speculate about the new forms that illustrated fiction may take. Innovative publishers are exploring and proposing publications where artwork is not seen as an added decorative element but an intrinsic part of the book and its narrative. It is exciting to imagine where cooperative models of authorship may take the contemporary novel. It seems though it will be up to a few brave independent publishers to take the lead and show the way. No doubt the rest will eventually follow.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Illustration by John Tenniel
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Contributors Susanna Baird Susanna previously wrote for the online design community Dribbble, helping transform their occasional blog into the online publication Courtside. Her bylines also include AOL News, Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, and Publishers Weekly, among other publications. www.susannabaird.com
R Kerry Squires Kerry graduated from Falmouth University in 2012. She is now working as a non-fiction book cover designer at Macmillan Higher Education, where she happily resides (and drinks lots of coffee).
R Nuria RodrĂguez Nuria is a designer, letterpress printer and Graphics tutor at City of Glasgow College in Glasgow. She’s also currently studying for a MRes in Publishing at Stirling University.
R If you would like to contribute to the next issue of Spine please send an email proposal to: hello@spinemagazine.co.uk 80