The Sherlock Holmes Series
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Designer: Coralie Bickford-Smith
Illustrator: Mike Topping
Publisher: Penguin
Typefaces: Antique & Fenwick

Coralie was kind enough to talk to us about her work on "The Sherlock Holmes Series". On a recent trip to England I picked up a copy of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and had a very hard time prying my mind away from the stereotypes of Holmes… even though they weren't contained in the book. Needless to say… Coralie and Mike did a great job presenting a fresh (and good looking) perspective. Thanks to both of you! —Jason

CORALIE
The Sherlock Holmes series came about shortly after I designed the first series of boys' adventure books - classic yarns with retro illustrations - and the idea was to pitch the Holmes series at the same market. They needed their own distinct style but there was a similar emphasis on the adventurous nature of the stories. I worked with Mike Topping (aka Despotica), who had illustrated one of the adventure books (The Prisoner of Zenda) and was a long-standing fan of the Holmes books.

MIKE
The thing that immediately came to mind was the necessity to avoid the deerstalker and curved pipe that are inextricably linked with Holmes in the public consciousness. These are affectations that took off in stage and screen adaptations of the stories and have become a kind of uniform associated with the character ever since. I wanted to get back to the Holmes of the books, a complicated, drug addicted genius, as handy with fists and pistol as with a magnifying glass.

CORALIE
It's not often you get your hands on a character as iconic as Holmes. That's exciting in itself, but the opportunity to challenge the widespread perception and present a side of the books that is less well known was irresistible.

MIKE
There's so much great material to work with in the stories. Considering they're all in the detective genre, they cover an awful lot of ground - not just murder, but espionage and shades of the supernatural. I wanted to combine some of the more sensational aspects of the stories in my illustrations and really pique the interest of people who had never read any Conan Doyle.

CORALIE
My initial brief to Mike was to use old engravings as a basis for the illustrations - partly because they had an appropriate period feel, but also because we needed to turn eight covers around in a fairly short amount of time. However, the limitations of that approach soon became clear. Of the initial roughs, Hound of the Baskervilles really stood out, with the hand painted elements making for a unified image with a lot of energy and atmosphere. Some of the collages felt cluttered and flat by comparison.

MIKE
I love collaging old engravings, but for this project I found the technique too restrictive - especially with eight covers to do. It was a really useful stage of the process though, as it was my attempts to breathe some excitement into them that gave me the idea of using film poster style composition. It soon became obvious that we were onto something with that, but that to make it work I needed to have more control over the elements of the composition by creating them myself.

CORALIE
The early film poster aesthetic was really strong and captured the excitement and adventure in the stories. It also had a nice interplay with the type - Gable Antique for the titles and Fenwick for the author name. One of the things I like to do with classics is to incorporate something to the setting or publication date, but to do so in a kind of design that wouldn't have featured on book jackets of the period. Once we were on this track, I encouraged Mike to make the composition of each jacket as strong as possible by only incorporating as many elements as necessary and focusing on atmosphere.

MIKE
Once we had worked out the approach that worked, these were great fun to illustrate. I particularly enjoyed integrating the type with the illustrations to give a strong poster feel to each cover.

CORALIE
As with all series design, colour was a crucial element. Each cover uses two Pantones, with black on some. The limited palette helped tie the series together, and the combinations were chosen to amplify the sensational feel. The final piece of the jigsaw was the use of Colorplan uncoated cover board for a really satisfying tactile quality to the books.

4.027.09 // Ian said:

The color palette (bright and vibrant) on these mixed with the illustration style makes for a incredible visual clash of old
and new.