WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE between a good book jacket and a great one? A good jacket reveals something about the content of the book: it hints at the basic plot, maybe even gives us a glimpse of the main characters. A very good book jacket re-creates the spirit of the book. A great book jacket, however, is so arresting that it makes you pick up the book in the first place.

In practice, book design is not simple. In publishing houses across the country book cover meetings often turn into fierce battles between the artistic and the commercial factions. Booksellers — whose approval can make or break sales — will have their own idea of what makes a good cover. The more it looks like the last season’s bestseller, the better for them: a chick-lit novel should look like a chick-lit novel (bright colours, flowery handwriting); a sad, nostalgic memoir should look like a sad, nostalgic memoir (a tinted black-and-white photograph of children running along a beach normally does the job). Authors want to have a word in, too: they like their book to look unique and subtle.

As a result, most books tend to have more than one cover: the ones in the bin that the designer wanted, and the one in the shops that pleases all parties. We picked two stand-out book covers this Christmas and asked their designers to explain the often long and arduous journey from a great story to a great jacket.

The Serpent’s Teeth, Ovid

Jim Stoddart, Penguin art director

Image 1 “This summer Penguin published a series of 20 paperbacks called Penguin Epics. Each book is a juicy extract from an ancient/classical text containing some of the most dramatic, gruesome, violent and visceral writing ever produced. The aim was to bring these exciting passages to a general modern readership without the ‘weight’ of the original pieces. For The Serpent’s Teeth our in-house picture editor Samantha Johnson tried to find a three-dimensional image of one of Ovid’s great heroes. She came across an 18th-century marble statue by Canova which depicts Theseus slaying a centaur.”

Image 2 “We passed this image on to Tony Lyons, of Estuary English, whom I had commissioned to work on the series. Tony is a big fan of the way in which Jamie Reid had cut up and manipulated images in his artwork for the Sex Pistols, and as the Epics series was all about excitement and energy, he thought that the punk rock aesthetic was fitting. Reid’s cover for the Pistols’ Pretty Vacant was a particular reference point.”

The final design (top, left) “Instead of the Sex Pistols’ trademark safety pin, Tony decided to use staples in the final cover, which are rendered in silver foil. The classical wrestling match between Theseus and the centaur becomes a violent, blood-splattered battle. I particularly like the irreverent cutting and pasting of different statue parts to create a new and spectacular image. Yet the layout is simple and confident. It’s a pretty hard cover to ignore.” The Fahrenheit Twins

Michel Faber

Angus Hyland,

Pentagram designer

Image 1 “The Fahrenheit Twins (published by Canongate) is a collection of short stories, although the cover design illustrates just the title story — a tale of two androgynous twins living in the Arctic. Two silhouettes found in a book of Japanese trademarks and logotypes from the 1980s formed the basis for the design. Though their original provenance is unclear, the silhouettes replicated an Edwardian style of illustration echoing the title story’s overall feel of a modern fairytale.”

Image 2 “The author had a very clear idea of what the twins should look like. He sent through a photograph that had served as the original inspiration for the story: an image from an old issue of National Geographic of two Lapp children in folk costume. Through a process of dialogue, the twins evolved from their original traditional form into the final off-beat renderings complete with pointy hats and furry boots.”

The final design

(top, right) “The twins were placed in a computer-generated polar setting, emphasising the icy feel. For the boards underneath the dust jacket of the hardback version we created a Bridget Riley-esque optical illusion: the twins seem to appear out of the Arctic snow. The decorative endpapers feature a repeat pattern — complete with snowflakes, helicopters and edelweiss mountain flowers.”

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