As part of the opening coverage on the Canada Reads web site, the creative minds at the CBC asked if us publishers could encourage the chosen book's designer to discuss what it was like creating the cover. Alan Jones, who designed The Book of Negroes, had this to say:
Designing this cover was a very straightforward and pleasant experience. And that’s mostly due to the fact that Lawrence Hill was so easy to work with. He was very particular on points of historical accuracy and the physical representation of the heroine, Aminata, but deferential on points of design. Really, it was an ideal working situation.
It was suggested at the outset that Aminata, the novel’s heroine, should be the focus of the design. I’m never terribly keen to hear that a specific person should appear on a cover. I think an author, having given life to a character, has a very real picture of that person in his mind -- one that can differ in a lot of ways from what a reader sees. So the difficulty for the designer is to find an image that matches that picture closely enough. What often follows is a soul-destroying search for the “perfect” photo during which everything is rejected because the ear lobes hang a bit too low, or the eyelashes are too long or the hair is the wrong degree of curliness. Usually, this process ends with that classic book cover compromise we all know and love: a photo with the head cut off.
Click through to read the rest of the post on the Canada Reads web site. And take a moment to look at the images, as I think it's a fairly fascinating way of exploring the evolution of the cover.
