The previous “Anatomy of…” got a lot of feedback (i.e. people seem to find it interesting how I design), so here’s another one. I’ll try to make this a regular feature on the blog as long as I find stuff that’s interesting enough.
Anyway. Worry Doll was the first graphic novel published by Mam Tor™ Publishing. Written and Illustrated by Australian artist Matt Coyle. Matt, shopping around for a publisher got in touch with Liam (the Mam Tor Editor-In-Chief), Liam fell in love with it, and subsequently I got the task of designing the book. Since my book designing skills are practically non-existent (i.e. I haven’t opened Quark in 4 years, and up until then an InDesign virgin), I asked my fiancée Liz - art director at Tank Magazine - to help me out with the book…
To start with, Matt had a pretty good idea what he wanted. Worry Doll had started as an illustrated children’s book, but quickly turned into a twisted murder/mystery story. He wanted to preserve the “children book” format, and was quite fond of the design of old Victorian novels.
Once we received the final script draft and artwork (Matt even supplied us with the rough mockup he’d made of the book) we started on the design. Early on it was decided to publish in a landscape A4 format, mainly to do Matt’s insanely intricate artwork justice.
Our first task was to find a suitable typeface. We wanted something with a quirky quality, but not overly cute. Liz suggested ITC Barcelona, a mid-weight serif font that answered all our criteria: elegant, quirky and of course - very legible.
Detail of the text set in Barcelona Book
The book design was a very straight-forward affair. Since Matt had written the story in little fragments that accompanied an illustration, it made sense not to mess with that. Each spread would have the text on the left page, art on the right. Liz built a 3 column grid for the text pages, which allowed us to nicely slot in the title, narrative, and any dialogue (which Matt had written separately) on the page.
The first spread in the book
The actual “guts” of the book were designed really fast. Liz knocked it out pretty much in a day. Magic to me, because I had no idea how she did it (InDesign virgin, remember?). Cool. A few tweaks left and right, and the book was done.
All we needed now was the cover.
Matt’s cover design for the mockup
Matt had designed the cover of the book for his mockup, and wanted to stay in that style: understated and simple, with an illustration that hinted at the story, but didn’t reveal anything.
Personally I felt that the design was too plain. I felt the cover illustration (a panel from the book) didn’t do anything for me, and it didn’t work with the dimensions of the landscape A4 format. I felt the cover space should be used to its fullest, and, as with everything that’s going to end up on the shelves of a comic shop, catch your eye immediately. This didn’t do it for me.
All the while, I was talking to Liam, and we already established that the whole book was going to be black & white, with a single colour on the cover: red. Liam was adamant that the red should be a blood splatter, hinting at the morbid story, and to indicate that “this is not for kids”. Now, I had no problem with a black/white/red cover - but a blood splatter? I don’t have anything against some splat, but this was such a staple of stereotyping in my eyes that I was going to do anything possible to avoid having a bloodsplat on the cover.
The first logo I designed for the book
While I was avoiding blood, we needed to get a cover mockup together for the Previews catalogue. For the uninitiated: Previews is a monthly catalogue of the main comics distributor Diamond. Every month they publish a phonebook sized catalogue listing everything, by every publisher, that will be released in 3 months time allowing retailers to place their orders. Worry Doll was scheduled for a February 2007 release (meaning amongst other things that we needed to get our files to the printer by January. No problem (Ha!).
Anyway - for the mockup, after raiding my font library I went with the unlikely choice of ITC Tiffany. I felt the extra bold version had something about it, and played with the concept of strands of thread (the lines) running through the logo.
I quickly came back from that idea, because it absolutely didn’t mesh with the rest of the book. I was still keen to explore the threads idea, so this time I used Barcelona:
“Barcelona Threads”
I quite liked this result. It fit with the book being about dolls, and the sketchyness of the type was a nod to Matt’s artwork.
Before you start screaming: that was the only time I actually used bloodsplatters in the design. Part of me just had to see why Liam was going on about using the blood.
A detail of the “threaded” type
As an added detail, the thread running through the title was an excerpt of the story, that I planned running along the cover. Just a little extra for keen observers
Now I had the logo for the book, but I still needed to add the art. The thing was however, that the more I was looking at the logo, I started to doubt this direction and design. Something was missing I felt, and more and more I thought it was too delicate for a cover.
Cover idea 1
So I started laying out the cover, with the “thread” logo and Matt’s art. I was trying to achieve some effect of the art being this element that came out of the cover; in this design being the doll opening the door, stepping in the book.
Mild panic was setting in at this point. The more I pushed in this direction, the more something at the back of my head screamed “This is not how you do this stuff!”. At this point I was just basing my whole design on a little Illustrator effect, taking the doll-thread analogy way to literally, and making a mess of the cover while Liz had created a beautifully understated design for the book.
There was one piece of art that had caught my eye from the start, a fragment of one of the final illustrations in the story, of a doll’s face looking straight at you. I had always felt this was more fitting to the title and the book. So I started playing with this illustration.
Jackpot!
I discarded Barcelona for the cover, and started browsing through my font collection again, looking for something big and fat - something I could use to treat the cover in a very bold, graphic way. I stumbled on Braggadocio, and although it’s a nice font, a bit too recognisable. However, while playing with the font, I tried overlaying the art, and blocking parts out, so the type effectively becomes a mask. Now I have the art and the type on the cover - and you can see it from a mile away.
But the blacks in the illustration bled into the black of the cover, making this pretty much an unusable solution. But I liked the possibility, so I started from scratch again and designed a custom logo, based on Braggadocio, for the cover.
Worry Doll logo
For the byline, I used Barcelona. It sits nice with the logo, and ties in with the design of the book.
Lastly, I took the doll face, used the “O” in “Worry” as a mask, and made it peek through it, straight at the reader.
Ah, and of course a splash of red, so everyone was happy.
The final Worry Doll cover
Worry Doll by Matt Coyle is available in all good comic shops, and online from the Mam Tor site.
July 22nd, 2007
Nice. Interesting to see how that cover evolved.
August 14th, 2007
Thanks for that Tom, looking forward to reading more as you post them!
September 25th, 2007
I have to say, I was stunned by this cover design, and I’m fascinated to see its history. It’s still completely out of left field I reckon - must have been some intuitive response, since the artwork is very different in style, and yet they complement each other well.
October 20th, 2007
I don’t know how much you realise insight into your work as someone as an established graphic designer is appreciated alot. Its strange because a lot of people expect someone like yourself not to have panic attack or problems and everything is done magicically. But reading the process of how you resolved the cover, it’s nice to know your still human.
November 23rd, 2007
[…] by the talented Belgian Graphic Designer and Image Maker Tom Muller who has put up an interesting in-depth look at the design process of this […]