Litnet

You are the senior designer at Picador - what does your job involve?

Everything from generating initial concepts and ideas, image searches, through to the design itself, and where necessary commissioning photographers and illustrators that can enhance the cover design, then presenting those covers in a cover meeting for approvals.

When discussing a potential new design, what do you keep in mind to keep it in line with the rest of the Picador brand?

That all depends on the book, as some are obviously more mass market than others, some will have more of a female readership, it may be a cool young audience, or it could be that you are trying to create something that is more of a gift purchase. With the 40th anniversary I just wanted to create something that would be stylish and would fit within the Picador brand.

You started working on the designs behind the Picador 40th before titles were picked. Did this make your job easier or harder? Could you take us through the design process? I believe you started with different kinds of media? How did you eventually pick the final concept? Please take us through the final concept - what are the themes and why the black and white?

Hard one to answer as I’ll never know, but it certainly influenced how I thought of the design as I started by creating various concepts for a series style, rather than looking at any individual title or author, while still trying to produce something that would be collectable.

Some of the early ideas were more like textile prints, repeat patterns with a standard area for the type. I tried typographic options and thought each cover could have its own type style, possibly illustrated, but I wasn’t sure how a title like Room would sit next to All the Pretty Horses, one being much longer than the other; and also, getting across the feel for the books would have been that much harder. But to some extent this idea carried through to the final design in that each cover has a specific typeface rather than a generic font.

I did a set where they were very simple – almost just shapes and colour – and although it didn’t really work it sort of led to the final cover style in that I then started to add more detail to the designs and illustrations. As most designs it ultimately evolved from all the various ideas I had had previously, with All the Pretty Horses almost becoming a repeat pattern, Last Orders being a very simple shape, The Sea again just using simple lines and Savage Detectives, which was initially an image from a set of photographic designs. 

Once I had a list of titles I could then fine-tune, so to speak, and there were some that I thought could benefit from having a softer, less graphic style, such as Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and Emma Donoghue’s Room, and for those I brought in freelance illustrator Robert Hunter. 

Having the covers all black and white was used as a way to unify the series as the books are from various decades and are very different in subject matter. I think it also makes them stand out when colour is the obvious choice. Printing them on uncoated stock with black foil for some details just adds something extra and makes them more tactile and therefore more collectable.

What exciting project are you working on next for Picador?

We seem to get new briefs everyday and all are different, but one that has just arrived in the office as a finished book was Land’s Edge by Tim Winton, which I kept very simple, with subtle colours of blue, and a light blue foil to give the impression of light on the water. As for tomorrow, who knows what I’ll be working on!

LitNet is giving away two complete sets of redesigned Picador Classics. Click here for information about this competition.

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