Peter Carey Backlist - Faceout Books

Peter Carey Backlist
Designer: © Jenny Grigg
Illustrator: © Jenny Grigg
Publisher: Random House Australia 2006

This is good example of a uniquely innovative design solution carried through an entire series. Each book is distinct to the others. Thanks for your contribution Jenny!
—Charles Brock

This project came with challenges that are different to the usual cover design brief. Not only were there nine covers to deal with as a set, but I had designed this same Peter Carey backlist five years earlier, and revisiting a project that was well received in the first instance, was a pretty hard call.

The first series didn’t deal directly with the contents of the novels themselves, so I saw this as the point of departure for the second series. In choosing a technique, I starting mucking around with coloured tissue paper, liking the inherent texture and colour in the material.

After reading some of each novel to remind me of the tone, I made fairly
quick cut-outs and manipulated them on a messy, paper-laden work
surface. Sometimes folding or creasing the paper to add form. Carey’s idiosyncratic writing style urged me to keep away from depicting anything too literally. To give the writing breathing space, I saw quite abstract, symbolic illustrations suiting.

Over the time it took to complete the illustrations, the process became more neat and tight, and I think the images lost something in their immediacy. It was a new technique that I hadn’t settled in with, before embarking on the project. Still, it was a fun start and I have developed the technique in the years since.

I work from a home studio and on this project, missed art direction support. There wasn’t an in-house art department to refer to, and the scope of the project called in so many options. Once I was underway, it took a lot of discipline to rally the millions of scraps of coloured tissue paper, onto nine neat front cover rectangles.

My favourites are still the roughest ones. I am looking for another opportunity to use this technique on a large project, but make myself complete it in one week, to get the spontaneity into a printed, final result.

Some images of the design process are included here to explain this text.
One image shows an alternative type treatment offered, where the type takes up the whole front cover, and the illustration is separated and placed on the back cover.