{image10}
Author: Timothy G. Compton
Designer: Anders Hanson
Publisher: Scarletta Press
Genre: Historical fiction
Typefaces: Tanek, Zapata, Broadwindsor
Imagery: Don Quijote, engraving by José Guadalupe Posada
The imagery and color in this make for an eye grabbing object. Read below for some of Anders' thoughts on the importance of an ARC! Thanks Anders!
—Jason Gabbert
I had some brief stints working for children's book publishers after school. I tried to make those jobs work out, but I found that I really needed to be surrounded with design-centered people. I finally found a job at a small design firm that produced children's books for my previous employer's competition. Six years later, I still spend most of my time designing children's books, but our firm has also developed into a trade book packager. One of my co-workers has been typesetting 35 years, so he usually does the guts, and the other four designers compete for the cover.
There is so much I love about design. I love how open-ended print design is. The page is like a little universe where you can create an entirely new piece of reality. And then to see your created world become a real-world object is very addicting, I think. I also love how necessarily dynamic book cover design is—the conceptual element, geometric element, the typographic element, the color element, and so on—all of these need to work in concert to make a good cover. There is just so much to chew on. Sometimes it feels like you're solving a puzzle while making up the rules at the same time.
The drama of the Mexican-American War as seen through the eyes of a native mexican man living in Mexico City. Much of the the plot takes place after Mexico City has been captured. It details how the personal lives of the residents are affected by the invading forces.
The translator's name had to be about half the size of the author name (I learned that about halfway through the project).
I looked at a lot a of art that specifically addressed the Mexican-American war. Some of it was interesting, but since it is not a war that that is well known in America, those images didn't properly communicate what the conflict was about. A bit later, I recalled my printmaking professor's lecture on José Guadalupe Posada's engravings, especially his calaveras. A quick search led me to an archive of his amazing prints and engravings (great hand-lettering, by the way) (José Guadalupe Posada Collection of Mexican Popular Prints).
The original cover design for the advanced reading copy (ARC) was much less colorful. It also featured large western-style type. Both of these features, I later realized when I first saw it printed, were huge mistakes. It felt like a non-fiction title, or at the very least, an incredibly drab account of a unknown war. It's geometry was nice, but none of the other cylinders were really firing. To make matters worse the printer had apparently decided the printed paper texture would look better if it were bluer and darker than any paper ever known to man. Also, I realized I wanted it to feel Mexican, rather than American. It's not a very patriotic book from an American point of view.
So I set out to fix these things. The problem was, no one else was really unhappy with it. Thank goodness someone had forgot to tell me the contract included a clause which mandated that the translator's name be about half the size of the author's name. This gave me an excuse to pretty much overhaul all the elements that weren't working, resulting in the final cover. Thankfully, my boss went along with it and was able to convince the marketing folks it was the right move.
I struggled with the exact geometry for the final cover. Part of me wanted it to be more erratic and violent. I played around with skewing some shapes. I was conflicted as to whether they communicated the mood better, or simply distracted from the engraving.
I did two other similar comps for the first round. I still like the geometry and symbolism of both of them, but they're lacking in the same ways that ARC cover was.
The Mexican-American war flies a bit below the typical American's historical radar. Partly because of our relatively good relations with Mexico, partly because of Mexico's recent lack of military ambition, most Americans have probably not thought about war with Mexico. So I basically just wanted the viewer to consider the prospect of war with our southern neighbors. I think that's a provoking thought if you really consider it.
The building at the bottom is the Mexican Parliament, which features prominently in the story. In one of the book's defining moments, a resident of the city snipes an American soldier as he attempts to raise the American flag over the parliament building.
From the standpoint of communicating what the book is about, I think it gets the main points across pretty clearly: it's a novel about about a historical Mexican war. But more importantly to me, it succeeds as an interesting object that calls to be picked up. I really tried to think about the book as an object, and more specifically, how the three-planes (cover, spine, back) of the cover related to each other. A lot of cover designs either drastically separate or connect those three planes. Here I was really interested in trying to do both at the same time—to really acknowledge their separation and allow them to converse simultaneously. I had seen a few designs that I thought achieved that, most notably the spine treatment on Sagmeister: Made You Look. That gave me the idea to bleed the "I" in Invasion around to the spine and use it as a sort of graphic element there. It pushes down on the "Yankee" while a competing element comes around from the back cover to push the author name. There was a bit of conflict symbolism here, but it wasn't anything I'd expect people to pick up on.
I learned that it's nice to have an ARC so you can live with it for a while and figure out how the design can be better. It's like book design pre-season.
11.09.09 // Ian said:
so pretty. love the colors and the way stuff wraps around the spine. Great cover and alternates as well.