By Oliver Munday
How did you get started doing book cover design? The publishing world is a tough industry to break into because you have to have a portfolio of cover work to get started. The beginning, for me, was building a body of work that reflected a sensibility suited to designing covers. I even- tually took my physical portfolio from DC to New York, where I currently live, and presented it to a few publishing houses. On one outing, my presentation ended with the creative director asking me, “Is that it?” I was forced to develop a thick skin very quickly.
What is unique about designing books? The wonderful thing about designing book jackets is that the project brief comes in the form of a work of art—sometimes. As a designer, you are given the chance to interpret a work that someone has slaved over. That is exciting to me.
How do you think book design influences the field of design in general? I think books greatly influence trends in design. Every designer has a bookshelf in their home, at their desk, at their office. The design of these books is embedded in the collective consciousness of the design world. Good jacket design feels like art, and art inherently inspires.
What has been your all-time favorite book cover to design and why? I don’t have an all-time favorite. Sometimes the less you are connected to a book, the easier it is to create something iconic. The deeper you get into the pathos of a novel, for instance, the deeper the well of imagery becomes. It can get terribly overwhelming at times. Ultimately, you want to respect the writing, but you also want to entice a potential reader. A recent cover I felt satisfied with is a Farrar, Straus & Giroux novel, The Silent History, a dystopian story about children who lose the capacity for language. The cover comes close to mirroring the strangeness of that idea.
How has book design changed as people read more things on screens? Covers need to function at a much smaller size now, thanks to our friends at Amazon. There haven’t been great leaps in technology to affect the way digital book covers look, but the interior design can be greatly enhanced by animations and layering. Looking at an issue of Wired in its digital form is enough to get an idea of that potential.
You co-founded a socially conscious design collaborative called Piece. What kind of work has it done, and how can design be a force for social justice? I believe that the way designers are trained to think can be applied to social justice. This seems lofty, but the principles of design thinking are mostly absent in the discussion of solving societal problems.
One of the most important experiences for me as a designer was a project for Martha’s Place, a women’s drug rehabilitation center in west Baltimore. We met some of the residents and worked with the staff to piece together a narrative. The process—which involved interviews, writing, original artwork and photography—demonstrated an incredible story about the transformation, not only within the residents, but also the neighborhood. We put together a newsprint publication of that story that they used to promote their history and their message.
In addition to working on covers, you illustrate many book reviews. How big a part of your job is reading? Reading is an extremely large part of my job. Second to designing, it is my favorite part. Illustrating a review is a bit different, in that sometimes your artwork reflects someone’s opinion of a book, rather than the book itself. An interesting by-product of this is when you see an illustration that was created for a book review later being used on a paperback edition of the book. That speaks to the success of creating something immediate and iconic in response to a text.
Do you have any recommendations for designers who are interested in starting to work on books? I think it is important to build a portfolio of projects that demonstrates you have an understanding of how a book cover should function. The cover’s responsibility is to elicit a reaction from someone, leaving them no choice but to pick it up. Strong type, striking imagery and the X factor—an element of mystery, humor or sensuality—combine to create something iconic. These traits constitute a successful poster as well. Keeping this sensibility in mind even when you design something that is ostensibly a small-scale project—a postcard, for example—will buttress your portfolio.
Do you read a book differently than a “normal” reader when you’re designing a cover? My process when designing a book cover has evolved, and I imagine it will continue to evolve the more I read. I used to read a manuscript in search of an image to use, but this became a hindrance to my understanding of the text as a whole. I put too much pressure on making sure I didn’t miss any potential imagery, and I was enjoying books less than when I was reading for pleasure. It felt more like work, and the stories left a cloudy imprint on my memory. I now approach it with less scrutiny and read the text with a greater sense of freedom. An idea might come to me a week after finishing. It might not be an image, either: it could be a feeling. I have allowed myself to become surprised by the process. This makes it exponentially more enjoyable as a reader.
What is unique about designing books? The wonderful thing about designing book jackets is that the project brief comes in the form of a work of art—sometimes. As a designer, you are given the chance to interpret a work that someone has slaved over. That is exciting to me.
How do you think book design influences the field of design in general? I think books greatly influence trends in design. Every designer has a bookshelf in their home, at their desk, at their office. The design of these books is embedded in the collective consciousness of the design world. Good jacket design feels like art, and art inherently inspires.
What has been your all-time favorite book cover to design and why? I don’t have an all-time favorite. Sometimes the less you are connected to a book, the easier it is to create something iconic. The deeper you get into the pathos of a novel, for instance, the deeper the well of imagery becomes. It can get terribly overwhelming at times. Ultimately, you want to respect the writing, but you also want to entice a potential reader. A recent cover I felt satisfied with is a Farrar, Straus & Giroux novel, The Silent History, a dystopian story about children who lose the capacity for language. The cover comes close to mirroring the strangeness of that idea.
How has book design changed as people read more things on screens? Covers need to function at a much smaller size now, thanks to our friends at Amazon. There haven’t been great leaps in technology to affect the way digital book covers look, but the interior design can be greatly enhanced by animations and layering. Looking at an issue of Wired in its digital form is enough to get an idea of that potential.
You co-founded a socially conscious design collaborative called Piece. What kind of work has it done, and how can design be a force for social justice? I believe that the way designers are trained to think can be applied to social justice. This seems lofty, but the principles of design thinking are mostly absent in the discussion of solving societal problems.
One of the most important experiences for me as a designer was a project for Martha’s Place, a women’s drug rehabilitation center in west Baltimore. We met some of the residents and worked with the staff to piece together a narrative. The process—which involved interviews, writing, original artwork and photography—demonstrated an incredible story about the transformation, not only within the residents, but also the neighborhood. We put together a newsprint publication of that story that they used to promote their history and their message.
In addition to working on covers, you illustrate many book reviews. How big a part of your job is reading? Reading is an extremely large part of my job. Second to designing, it is my favorite part. Illustrating a review is a bit different, in that sometimes your artwork reflects someone’s opinion of a book, rather than the book itself. An interesting by-product of this is when you see an illustration that was created for a book review later being used on a paperback edition of the book. That speaks to the success of creating something immediate and iconic in response to a text.
Do you have any recommendations for designers who are interested in starting to work on books? I think it is important to build a portfolio of projects that demonstrates you have an understanding of how a book cover should function. The cover’s responsibility is to elicit a reaction from someone, leaving them no choice but to pick it up. Strong type, striking imagery and the X factor—an element of mystery, humor or sensuality—combine to create something iconic. These traits constitute a successful poster as well. Keeping this sensibility in mind even when you design something that is ostensibly a small-scale project—a postcard, for example—will buttress your portfolio.
Do you read a book differently than a “normal” reader when you’re designing a cover? My process when designing a book cover has evolved, and I imagine it will continue to evolve the more I read. I used to read a manuscript in search of an image to use, but this became a hindrance to my understanding of the text as a whole. I put too much pressure on making sure I didn’t miss any potential imagery, and I was enjoying books less than when I was reading for pleasure. It felt more like work, and the stories left a cloudy imprint on my memory. I now approach it with less scrutiny and read the text with a greater sense of freedom. An idea might come to me a week after finishing. It might not be an image, either: it could be a feeling. I have allowed myself to become surprised by the process. This makes it exponentially more enjoyable as a reader.
Oliver Munday digests the emotional essences of stories, from Lolita to modern conversation-sparker Cubed, by Nikil Saval, then creates covers with such literary intelligence that it’s safe to call them art. His jacket for Matthew Olshan’s Marshlands features textured swirls—placid water, speckled white foam and algae-like gold—that beckon readers deeper into the marsh. His editorial work extends to infographics for GOOD magazine and illustrations for Wired and the New York Times Book Review. Aside from his own New York studio, he also helped launch the socially conscious design collaborative Piece. His mission-driven clients include 826DC and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School for Public Health.
