Author: Steve Toltz
Designer: Nathan Burton
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton imprint of Penguin
Treatments: Die Cut, Printed Case.
"I've been a fan of Nathan's work for a while and I especially enjoy this cover. I want to thank Nathan for taking the time to share with us."
— Charles
I was an inhouse designer for Penguin, looking after the Hamish Hamilton imprint when I worked on this cover. Like most of the HH books I worked on there was no brief, just read the book and come up with an idea.
At some point in the narrative the main characters live in a house surrounded by a maze of hedges. I thought this could make a great cover image and spent a lot of time noodling about with mazes and type. Great fun but in the end it was decided that it wasn't quite right for the book.
After spending so much time on the aborted maze cover I needed a quick solution. I had an image of a dog that I'd found on Mary Evans Picture Library that I always wanted to use somehow so I started playing around with the idea of a cover that was missing a "fraction" of it by punching out holes to reveal the title underneath. The editor (Simon Prosser, very supportive) loved the idea but didn't get the dog (ok, there was no dog in the book but by this stage I was getting a bit desperate). He suggested an Australian landscape which worked perfectly. Phew!
The type face came from an old type book and which I traced over to give a hand drawn feel. The image is from pictureaustralia.org, which collates photo's from various Australian institutions.
12.15.09 // Ian Shimkoviak said:
just wonderful. amazing "comps" if you could call them that. so much fine tuning and time. a new favorite designer no doubt.