When a Writer Wants You and Only You to Design Their Cover
Alison Forner on Creating the Cover for Lisa Brennan-Jobs' Small Fry
As an art director for the Simon & Schuster imprint, I’m fortunate to be able to work on some of the best books being published today and with some of the best editors in the industry. I often have more than enough on my plate designing and art directing our numerous titles, but because I truly love what I do, and I’m a bit of a workaholic, I also have an active freelance career in addition to my full-time job. In my free time, I design a wide range of fiction and non-fiction covers for publishing houses across the US and internationally.
When I was contacted by Grove Atlantic last year to design a memoir, I was thrilled—I had never worked with them before and I’ve always admired the books they publish. When a follow-up email mentioned that the author, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, had specifically asked for me—she found me through a Google search and said she loved the way I integrated illustrations and fonts—I was shocked and incredibly flattered . . . which quickly led to an overwhelming sense of dread that I would never be able to pull this off, and that all of my previous design work had been the result of divine intervention. Such is the roller coaster of creative work.
I soon got over myself and started working. I was immediately drawn in to Lisa’s beautiful manuscript, but it proved particularly difficult for me—I, too, had a messy, complicated, on-and-off relationship with my father for many years after my parents’ divorce. I’d never read anything else that captured the perspective of a young child dealing with a mercurial, often volatile, parent in quite the same way this book does. While it’s rare and wonderful to connect with a manuscript in this way, too much emotional investment can be detrimental to the design process. Often, if I truly love a book or connect with it on a personal level, there’s an added pressure to get it right—to do it justice.
Lisa’s memoir affected me in such a way that my first round of comps probably channeled more of my experience than hers, which is exactly what one shouldn’t do when designing a memoir!
The comps were too dark, too sad, and just not what Lisa felt her memoir conveyed. She thought it would be helpful for us to speak over the phone, so we set up a time to talk.
I don’t often have direct contact with authors, but given how personal this project was for Lisa, it was important to hear her talk about the manuscript and what it meant to her. Even though the book contains dark moments from her past, she made clear that this wasn’t a memoir of suffering. She talked about never feeling lonely as a child . . . the golden light in northern California . . . her ever-present sense of idealism and positivity.
It was during this conversation that the image you see on the final jacket popped into my head. I’m a visual learner and thinker—which is probably why I ended up in graphic design—but my visual ideas are usually more amorphous and don’t often come fully formed like this one did. Something about our conversation sparked this idea in such a clear way that I essentially had the entire jacket designed in my head before I sat down at my computer again.
For the next round, I sent Lisa the flower-girl-collage design along with some new options that included a photo of her with her dad:
My gut feeling was that the photo was completely wrong—the focus was on Steve, not Lisa—and while it was the most obvious approach in terms of marketing, it certainly wasn’t right for this particular memoir. This wasn’t a tell-all, but a coming-of-age story that just happened to include a famous father. But since most books involving a public figure feature the person in question and we had avoided this up until now, I think we were both curious to see what would happen if we tried it.
Thankfully, Lisa was immediately drawn to the flower-girl and the final jacket evolved from there. We spoke again to discuss refinements and paper options. Her only concern was the title typeface, so I tried several different variations. Eventually we circled back to the original and decided to print on uncoated, textured stock to give the book more of a literary feel.
I can’t thank Lisa or Grove Press enough for taking a chance on what is really an unusual approach to the genre. I love it when an author and publisher are willing to take risks and put their trust in a designer’s vision, regardless of what type of jacket has sold best in the past.
And I truly appreciate having worked so closely with an author on what is essentially her life story. It’s an enormous responsibility to design someone’s memoir and I’m honored that Lisa trusted me enough to put her story in my hands.
