"I love SPINE"

2022-05-10 22:54:45

SPINE COVER DESIGNERS AUTHORS ILLUSTRATORS BEGINNING TO END BOOK COVERS WE LOVE UNI-PRESS ROUND-UP PODCAST MORE Back MASTHEAD ADVERTISE CONTACT COVER DESIGNERSAUTHORSILLUSTRATORSBEGINNING TO ENDBOOK COVERS WE LOVEUNI-PRESS ROUND-UPPODCAST MORE MASTHEAD ADVERTISE CONTACT SPINE How books are put together. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyMay 04, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Eric C. Wilder, The Devastation of Silence, Joao ReisComment Eric C. Wilder on Designing The Devastation of Silence Along with materials and direction from the publisher, I was afforded the opportunity to discuss the cover creative for this book directly with both the author and translator. It was agreed that the overall drive of imagery should convey a certain “gallows humor.”The story’s setting takes place in WWI, where a captured Portuguese Expeditionary Corps Captain is taken to a German prison camp. I did an image search on the PEC and other related imagery. From that I found two images in particular that had, what I felt was a certain quality of gallows humor. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyMay 04, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Eric C. Wilder, The Devastation of Silence, Joao ReisComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyApril 26, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Jodi Hunt, My Fathers' Daughter, Hannah-Azieb Pool, Black Britain Writing BackComment Jodi Hunt on Designing My Fathers' Daughter My Fathers’ Daughter is a powerful and intimate memoir, in which Hannah-Azieb Pool takes us on her extraordinary journey of self-discovery. From an orphanage in Eritrea to life with her white adoptive father in England believing she did not have any living blood relatives. Hannah-Azieb takes us on her courageous journey to Eritrea to meet her surviving Eritrean family. It's a story of identity, family and home told with warmth and wisdom. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyApril 26, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Jodi Hunt, My Fathers' Daughter, Hannah-Azieb Pool, Black Britain Writing BackComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyApril 12, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Pete Garceau, Pathological, Sarah Fay, MemoirComment Pete Garceau Designs a Psychedelic Cover for Pathological Pathological is a memoir that tells the story of the factors that led to, and then consequences and aftermath of, the six misdiagnoses Sarah Fay received over a twenty-five year period (anorexia, major depression disorder, anxiety disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bipolar disorder). The standard method used to diagnose these disorders is massively flawed, and Sarah launches a deep investigation to expose the truth. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyApril 12, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Pete Garceau, Pathological, Sarah Fay, MemoirComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyApril 05, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Art Director, Art Direction, Atmosphere Press, Ronaldo AlvesComment Art Director Spotlight: Ronaldo Alves Ronaldo Alves has been a graphic designer for more than fifteen years. After gaining a degree at Senai in Brazil, Ronaldo worked at various agencies and design studios before finding his current home at Atmosphere Press, where he has been the Art Director since 2021.Atmosphere Press uses a “partnership” model, where they “aim to put the power not in the hands of the press, but in the hands of the writer, where it belongs.” Putting the author first fits in perfectly with Ronaldo's way of working, “My role as an Art Director is to ensure that the covers we create visually translate the authors’ concept.” The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyApril 05, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Art Director, Art Direction, Atmosphere Press, Ronaldo AlvesComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyMarch 22, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Vi-An Nguyen, Four Treasures of the Sky, Jenny Tinghui ZhangComment Vi-An Nguyen on Designing Four Treasures of the Sky Big, salty tears dotted my phone screen when I read the manuscript of Four Treasures of the Sky. It’s absolutely heartbreaking, following young Daiyu in the 1880s as she’s kidnapped and forced to find a way to survive three harrowing experiences across China and the American West (at the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act). Daiyu’s journey is unbelievably desperate, sweeping, and moving—to read it is to move through utter anguish and bittersweet triumph alongside her, all while never daring to stop turning the pages because the writing is so poetic yet propulsive. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyMarch 22, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Vi-An Nguyen, Four Treasures of the Sky, Jenny Tinghui ZhangComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyMarch 08, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Owen Gildersleeve, Mumtaz Mustafa, Burntcoat, Sarah HallComment Owen Gildersleeve on Designing Burntcoat When I was approached by HarperCollins to design the cover for Sarah Hall’s stunning new novel Burntcoat I was immediately struck by how timely the story was, with the book focusing on an artist and her lover in lockdown at her immense studio ‘Burntcoat’ whilst the world around her burns and disintegrates, due to a deadly new virus which is wreaking havoc around the world. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyMarch 08, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Owen Gildersleeve, Mumtaz Mustafa, Burntcoat, Sarah HallComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyMarch 04, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, marketing, marketing design, Teresa SarmientoComment Teresa Sarmiento on her Job as a Marketing Designer When I decided to try and get into publishing, I had come all the way from Spain to New York City with the dream of learning in the publishing epicenter of the world. And while studying for a Masters of Science in Publishing: Digital and Print Media at NYU, I started to become more interested in the design aspect of books.After my first year in New York, I got an internship at Bloomsbury Publishing for the Marketing Design department. And that eventually led to a full-time job. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyMarch 04, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, marketing, marketing design, Teresa SarmientoComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyFebruary 21, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Alissa Dinallo, Small Joys of Real Life, Allee Richards, Freelancer February, FreelanceComment Freelancer February: Alissa Dinallo on Designing Small Joys of Real Life The process of designing this cover was relatively straight forward. Originally titled In Real Life, this beautiful debut novel centers around a young woman living in Melbourne, Australia, who falls pregnant after a one night stand. At first we explored some photographic options, which were beautiful, but not quite right for the book. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyFebruary 21, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Alissa Dinallo, Small Joys of Real Life, Allee Richards, Freelancer February, FreelanceComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyFebruary 11, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Will Staehle, How High We Go in the Dark, Sequoia NagamatsuComment Freelancer February: Will Staehle on Designing How High We Go in the Dark I was blown away when I first read Sequoia Nagamatsu’s novel, How High We Go In the Dark. It’s an incredibly powerful read, one that seems to hit every emotion, and every walk of life.Technically, How High We Go In The Dark is a book, but in many ways it feels more like a prism disguised as a book. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyFebruary 11, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, Will Staehle, How High We Go in the Dark, Sequoia NagamatsuComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyFebruary 08, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, illustration, All of You Every Single One, Beatrice Hitchman, Emily Mahon, Kimberly GlyderComment Emily Mahon and Kimberly Glyder on Collaborating for All of You, Every Single One All of You Every Single One, a literary novel set in the bohemian enclave of early 20th century Vienna, follows a group of queer-identifying characters before and during World War II. The process behind the cover took a few starkly different courses before settling on an approach that focused specifically on artists of the Vienna Secession movement. The original idea from the Art Director, Deb Wood, was to focus on sense of place and/or a single object that could represent the story. One of the key characters in the story is a tailor and so I felt that the thread/needle/mannequin represented a key element of the story. I wanted to include some of the striking typography that is relevant to the period. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyFebruary 08, 2022book, cover, design, book cover design, illustration, All of You Every Single One, Beatrice Hitchman, Emily Mahon, Kimberly GlyderComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyFebruary 03, 2022book, cover, design, Jason Anscomb, The Psychopath, Andrew EdwardsComment Freelancer February: Jason Anscomb on Designing The Psychopath The Psychopath pitches itself somewhere between American Psycho and Dexter and is influenced by both to some small extent.The cover brief was to find a solution that hinted at the themes of academia and murder. The main protagonist also had clear signs of having Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder which I thought could possibly play a part in the design.An initial thought I followed for a while was to portray a murder weapon. How about a baseball bat (from P.E.) a compass or sharpened pencil? The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyFebruary 03, 2022book, cover, design, Jason Anscomb, The Psychopath, Andrew EdwardsComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyNovember 25, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Sara Wood, God of Mercy, Okezie NwokaComment Sara Wood on Designing God of Mercy In October of 2020 — at a time when I was wrapping up my first year of full-time freelance work and was deeply mired in the daily stresses of pandemic life — I was lucky enough to receive an e-mail from Rodrigo Corral, in which he offered an exciting opportunity to escape into a world very different from my own, via God of Mercy by debut author, Okezie Nwoka, published by Astra House. Rodrigo explained that Astra House was a new imprint, and that this novel would feature in its inaugural season. Everything about the prospect of this work felt refreshing and new, and I couldn’t wait to get started. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyNovember 25, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Sara Wood, God of Mercy, Okezie NwokaComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyNovember 17, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Elizabeth Yaffe, Chouette, Claire OshetskyComment Elizabeth Yaffe on Designing Chouette I first heard of Chouette as a submission that an editor was interested in pursuing. Art usually enters the equation after a book has been acquired, but one of the changes that the pandemic brought was that the meeting where editors pitch prospective books became a meeting that the whole team attended. I remember that the strange and compelling premise caught my attention more than almost any other submission discussed in those meetings; I was excited to hear that we would be publishing it and then, several months later, that I would get to design it. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyNovember 17, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Elizabeth Yaffe, Chouette, Claire OshetskyComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyNovember 11, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Marina Drukman, The Blue Book of Nebo, Manon Steffan RosComment Marina Drukman on Designing The Blue Book of Nebo The Blue Book of Nebo takes place in post-apocalyptic Wales. A mother and her teenage son, the only survivors of a mysterious explosion, are trying to survive in their rural home, in a world where death is in the air, and no other people remain. At some point they find an empty journal with a blue cover in a neighbor’s house, and decide to document their lives in it. Both of them are stern characters, they don’t share much with one another, but they share with the blue book. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyNovember 11, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Marina Drukman, The Blue Book of Nebo, Manon Steffan RosComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyNovember 08, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Jason Arias, Space Forces, Fred ScharmenComment Jason Arias on Designing Space Forces The first image that came to mind was a spaceship bouncing from planet to planet with a bit of whimsy and charm indicative of the mid-century optimism in space exploration as a juxtaposition to our current dystopian lens. The iconic spaceship is a reference to the red aeronautics symbol in NASA’s “meatball” logo designed in 1959, and the way it’s interrupting the title represents human efforts to domesticate outer space. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyNovember 08, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Jason Arias, Space Forces, Fred ScharmenComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyNovember 01, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Michel Vrana, Original Prin, Dante's Indiana, Randy BoyagodaComment Michel Vrana on Designing Dante's Indiana Dante’s Indiana (Biblioasis Books) is a sequel to Randy Boyagoda’s first novel Original Prin. The second book is described by the publisher as “an extraordinary journey through the divine comedies and tragedies of our time.”‘Comedy and tragedy’ is also an apt way to describe the surprise in finding out that a book design now has a sequel. There is absolutely a different approach taken in designing a book cover if it’s known that it will become a series vs. doing so after the fact. That said, it’s also an engaging design challenge figuring out just how to extend the design language of a previously published book to a new one! The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyNovember 01, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Michel Vrana, Original Prin, Dante's Indiana, Randy BoyagodaComment Vyki HendyOctober 26, 2021Comment Dana Li Experiments with Collage for Gentrifier Gentrifier begins with writer and artist Anne Elizabeth Moore granted a free house in Detroit’s majority-Bangladeshi “Banglatown” through a Detroit arts organization. The book is part memoir, part investigation, and details Moore’s residency in her new town as she grapples with the thorny ethics of owning property as a white woman in a majority Black city and a majority Bangladeshi neighborhood. Vyki HendyOctober 26, 2021Comment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyOctober 18, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Glen Wilkins, The Cabinet, Un-Su Kim, Pop art, MangaComment Glen Wilkins on Designing The Cabinet I worked through a lot of concepts for this cover, as I liked the idea of going quite left-field with the design. So I looked at Eastern colour palettes and imagery, especially toys and Manga-style images. I really like the jackets designed for Ryu Murakami, they have a lovely balance of photography and pop art. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyOctober 18, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Glen Wilkins, The Cabinet, Un-Su Kim, Pop art, MangaComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyOctober 15, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Vera Drmanovski, Herman HesseComment Vera Drmanovski on Redesigning the Novels of Hermann Hesse Have you ever fallen in love with a writer early on in your life, and you keep re-falling in love every decade or so?That is my relationship with Hermann Hesse. In my late teens, I discovered the world of Hermann Hesse and fell in love with his deeply philosophical way of thinking, written in a way I could relate to and understand even as a young soul. I keep coming back to his books every decade or so, experiencing them in a whole new way, as if they are growing up with me. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyOctober 15, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Vera Drmanovski, Herman HesseComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyOctober 12, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Todd Atticus, She's a Killer, Kirsten McDougallComment Todd Atticus on Designing She's a Killer As soon as the new Kirsten McDougall novel dropped into my inbox, I knew that nothing but the boldest design work would do it justice. The book is tense, witty, sharp, and packed with ideas and motifs that lent themselves to a strong cover. The trouble was picking which to focus on.She’s A Killer is set in a near-future New Zealand where rich foreigners are fleeing to escape the effects of climate disaster. Against a backdrop of food shortages, societal unrest and fear, we meet Alice, a thirty-something university administrator with a near-genius IQ and an imaginary friend. When Alice meets Pablo, a so-called ‘wealthugee’ (wealthy refugee), she thinks she’s found a way out of her dull existence, but when she meets his teenage daughter she’s forced to think again. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyOctober 12, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Todd Atticus, She's a Killer, Kirsten McDougallComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendySeptember 23, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Henry Petrides, Matrix, Lauren GroffComment Henry Petrides on Designing Lauren Groff's Matrix It’s hugely daunting being asked to design a cover for one of your favourite writers, particularly when that writer is as universally acclaimed as Lauren Groff . Lauren’s short story collection Florida took my breath away, and her new novel Matrix is equally as exquisite.Matrix tells the fictionalised story of Marie De France, banished by the royal court to become the prioress of a remote and ailing abbey. The novel follows her decades of rein over the abbey, exploring themes of female creativity, desire and power. I read the manuscript over Christmas last year, jotting down phrases that caught my attention and doodling some initial visual ideas in the margins. I could sense at this early stage it was going to be a balancing act between the medieval setting, and the thoroughly modern tone of Lauren’s writing. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendySeptember 23, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Henry Petrides, Matrix, Lauren GroffComment The Designer's ProcessSavannah CordovaSeptember 20, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, typography, perfect your typographyComment How to Perfect Your Book Cover’s Typography Even if the average bookshop-browser doesn’t know the difference between a serif font and a sans serif font, the typeface of your book's title and other cover text can make the difference between yours being the book they pick up, and the one they glide past.An especially crucial component of your book’s cover, your choice of typography can let readers know whether your book’s for them by reflecting its content, genre, and overall professionalism. The wrong typographical choice can make it seem unprofessional, unexceptional, and misleading — a font-derived fate we’d all rather avoid. The Designer's ProcessSavannah CordovaSeptember 20, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, typography, perfect your typographyComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendySeptember 07, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Jim Tierney, How to Find Your Way in the Dark, Derek B. MillerComment Jim Tierney on Designing How to Find Your Way in the Dark When Art Director Brian Moore asked me to design this cover, both the title and manuscript were still unfinalized, but he described the novel as a sprawling coming-of-age story about a young Jewish boy navigating life in America between the World Wars. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendySeptember 07, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Jim Tierney, How to Find Your Way in the Dark, Derek B. MillerComment The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyAugust 25, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Lynn Buckley, The Siren, Katherine St. JohnComment Lynn Buckley Goes Vintage for The Siren This was a lot of fun to work on with Albert Tang, the art director. The initial direction was straightforward: "Should feel like a good cousin to The Lion’s Den (my design for the author's previous title) But not a sequel." The direction from the cover brief was "Pretty much a woman in siren pose. Backdrop – some fancy island. (Where I want to be)" Ha--me too. The Designer's ProcessVyki HendyAugust 25, 2021book, cover, design, book cover design, Lynn Buckley, The Siren, Katherine St. JohnComment FEATURED ITEMS Featured Spine Staff April Book Covers We Love! Spine Staff Spine Staff Featured Jordan Wannemacher 2021 AU Presses, Book, Jacket, and Journal Show Selections Jordan Wannemacher Jordan Wannemacher Featured Susanna Baird Beginning to End – Mercy House: Publicist, Jes Lyons Susanna Baird Susanna Baird Featured Hiba Tahir Spine Podcast, Bonus Episode: Jasmin Kaur Hiba Tahir Hiba Tahir ©2020 Spine.All rights reserved.