Friday, July 06, 2012

Designer Jon Gray dissects JK Rowling's new book cover for A Casual Vacancy


The jacket design for JK Rowling’s forthcoming adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, was released yesterday. Design guru Jon Gray dissects the inspiration behind – and the meaning of – the cover in question

JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy

For a cover designer these books are both the easiest and the hardest titles you will ever work on. Easiest: because, let’s face it, you can put anything on the front and it will sell. Hardest: because not only do you have an expectant publishing house, agent and author wanting to know what you are doing and when they can see something – you also have the whole world wanting a sneak peak.
It’s clear from the cover of The Casual Vacancy that the brief was: make it look as different from the Harry Potter series as possible. A bright coloured background to position it well away from the fantasy gothic genre and some jaunty hand-drawn typography to indicate a warm and accessible tale. There is a hint at politics in the imagery, but apart from that this cover tells you nothing and that, I think, is precisely the point. As a reader you are no closer to the story inside. There is nothing to prejudge or dismiss, it’s just type.
There has been a resurgence in hand-drawn covers over the past 10 years or so. This is precisely because it allows you to hint at personality and individuality and not show character or setting. Those decisions are left with the reader. The Art of Fielding, The Fault in Our Stars, Salmon Fishing in Yemen, the new Danny Wallace novel, all employ hand-drawn type and elements to set you at ease – to make you feel you are entering tactile, warm, “book of the week” territory.
JD Salinger famously had a clause written into his contract stating that no imagery could appear on his covers. Günter Grass will only allow his own drawings. The classic orange Penguins, the poetry covers of Faber: they tell us nothing other than this is a book of note, a book of importance. JK Rowling’s name is the important piece of information, the quality assurance mark, and it is stated very simply and boldly in the brightest and clearest way possible.
I don’t love this cover, because like all cover designers, I think I could have done a better job. But I can see why they have designed it this way and I can appreciate the huge number of hurdles that it probably took to get to it.
Jon Gray is a freelance designer who, working under the name “gray318” has designed book jackets for all the major publishers in the world over the past twelve years, including the now classic cover of Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, a new set of Roald Dahl reissues, and the forthcoming novel by Zadie Smith, NW.

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