Judge a Book by its Cover — Notes on Book Design
Ten years ago, HarperCollins sent me the manuscript for Janice Pariat’s The Nine-Chambered Heart, and I fell in love with designing book covers. The best covers add a layer of meaning before the reader encounters a single line of text, they become a form of commentary, a dialogue between designer and author that enriches the work.
In this essay, I look at recent covers I admire — including Arsh Raziuddin’s design for Rushdie’s Knife and Chris Ferrante’s brilliant collision of a Flemish still life with synthetic blue for Free Gifts — and share my own process designing new covers for Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, using Indian Gond art to emphasise the universality of these myths.
I also make the case that the elegant sobriety of publishers like Gallimard is just as much a form of packaging as a vivid illustrated cover.
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