Penguin by Design

Shortlist announced!  

 A big thank you to everyone who entered the Penguin Random House Design Award 2016 - we had a record-breaking 1,600 entries this year.

 Many congratulations to the shortlisted entrants:

 Adult Fiction Cover Award – shortlisted entrants

Emily Bell – University of Northampton

Andrew Bremmler – University of Northampton

Lewis Copland – Gray’s School of Art

Zac Crook – University of Central Lancashire

Thongtipaya Pinitpouvadol – Kingston University

Callum Richards – Cardiff Metropolitan University

Jack Rowbottom – Cardiff Metropolitan University

Rohit Sharma – London College of Communication

Anja Sušanj – Camberwell College of Arts, UAL

 Adult Non-Fiction Cover Award – shortlisted entrants

Céline Adam – University of South Wales

Chloe Blackwell – Edinburgh Napier University

Emma Bradley – University Campus Suffolk

Katerina Horka – Prague College

Gizem Kaymanli – University of Northampton

Adam McCabe – Falmouth University

Melissa Morris – Leeds College of Art

Kasia Serafin – Gray’s School of Art

Zachary Wieland – University of Texas

Lisa J. Wilson – University of Wolverhampton

 Children’s Cover Award – shortlisted entrants

George Eccles – University of Gloucestershire

Daria Grezel – Birmingham City University

Kirstie Hamilton – Nottingham Trent University

Ailsa Johnson – University of Edinburgh

Andrea Karan – Gray’s School of Art

Shana Lohrey – London College of Communication

Danielle Massam – Stockport College

Maddy Mould – University of Cumbria, Institute of the Arts

Rachel Rudston – University Campus Suffolk

Emma Tully – Liverpool John Moores University

  The winners will be announced on Wednesday 22nd June.

 All the winning and shortlisted designs will be available to view on the Design Award website by Monday 27th June.

All the shortlisted entrants have been contacted about the next stage of the competition. We regret that we cannot enter into any further correspondence with non-shortlisted entrants.

We have some exciting news – our brand new website is here, and it’s the place to go for all things bookish. This means we won’t be posting any new updates on the Penguin Design Tumblr, but don’t worry, we’ve moved all your favourite articles, interviews and extracts to www.penguin.co.uk

Our new website is a space where you can lose yourself in the world of books like never before. Alongside all of the books published by Penguin Random House, you’ll be able to discover unique voices from debut and much-loved authors; delve into the stories behind the stories; get inspired by in-depth features, podcasts and reading lists; and explore the lives of your favourite authors and characters.

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Penguin cover designer Chris Bentham discusses the striking new cover for The Rights of Man.

This is an almost exact replica of the original cover for The Rights of Man. That’s quite an unusual design approach but it felt right, given that there are so many parallels between the time that it was published (1940) and now - particularly the fact that human rights legislation, which H.G Wells helped to instigate, is under threat. Aside from Ali Smith’s introduction, the text hasn’t changed at all, and we wanted the cover to reflect the similarities between the two eras.

The original edition of this book was the classic Penguin orange in colour, but we made this version red for that more radical, rebellious feel - plus it’s a very left-wing text. Choosing the right red meant doing a few test prints as the finish makes a big difference to how colours look in the end: the same red can end up looking like three different shades.

I think this one fell on my desk because it needed to be reconstructed from scratch, and I love typography and am a bit of a geek about the historical Penguin covers. Obviously, I had the original cover as a visual reference, but it’s not like having image files to hand, so I needed to identify the fonts and rebuild all of the other elements. The body copy and the author name is all in Gill Sans, and the title is a version of Rockwell to which I added a drop shadow. It would originally have been printed using a similar method to letterpress, so that detail needed to be added in by hand.

I really like the way that, with old Penguin, covers, there’s often something which isn’t quite right - it’s quite endearing - and I wanted to keep that in this design. The lettering on the spine faces the opposite direction to modern covers, which is an intentional choice, as that’s how Penguin covers used to be designed. Similarly, there’s far too much text on the back. Normally, I’d try to get the editor to cut the copy down, but we decided between us that it would actually look better if we stuffed it full of text, which gives it the feel of a Victorian handbill.

Graphic artist Neil Gower discusses his iconic new covers for Bill Bryson’s The Road to Little Dribbling, and the rest of his backlist.

What led to your working on new cover designs for Bill Bryson’s books?

Bill Bryson crept up on me in a way, over many years. In 2013, having previously produced various maps, endpapers and illustrations used inside his books, I was asked to design the cover for a new title, One Summer. The brief: to capture the spirit of 1927, the momentous year in American history it celebrates. The process was rather exciting, the design evolving as I received one chapter at a time, hot from Bill’s computer, ink still wet. The cover was very well received generally but also, crucially, by Bill himself. When he came to write The Road to Little Dribbling, he requested that I devise the cover for that too.

In the manuscript were references to a Frank Newbould poster of the South Downs and to John Hassall’s celebrated ‘Skegness is SO Bracing’ poster. This triggered the quickest, most cursory of doodles in my notebook, simply to get something on paper: the Seven Sisters on the Sussex coast in the background, with the Skegness jolly fisherman prancing across the foreground. The longer I looked at it, the stronger and more complete it seemed. White cliffs (what could be more British?) with amiable character bounding over them? I decided to submit it, thinking they could only say no. It was nodded straight through. The Road to Little Dribbling was written as a follow-up to Notes from a Small Island, so a new, sister cover for the twentieth anniversary reissue of that was commissioned too. I felt that this needed to be urban and northern, to restore the geographical centre of gravity across the two titles. Hence the view of Knaresborough, with steam train (plus jolly fisherman, bobbing in the water this time). Shortly afterwards the whole back-list landed in my lap.

Were you familiar with Bill Bryson’s books before?  What was it in his books that appealed to you in particular?  How involved did he get with the covers?

I had read and been smitten by The Lost Continent when it first came out, then enjoyed subsequent books both for pleasure and work. Bill’s books appeal because he not only shares our own fascinations and bemusements, but is also infinitely more forensic in his explorations, and engaging in his explanations of them, than we could ever be. Bill was sent sketch outlines for each cover concept, but he has been very easy-going and has not requested any changes. So far.

How did you come up with the idea to use familiar paintings by famous American artists to inspire the style of some of these covers?  

I was floundering somewhat for an idea for The Lost Continent when Edward Hopper’s ‘Gas’ painting sprang to mind. It offered the perfect cocktail of driving and a vanishing America; the last chance to fill up before a momentous journey. In my version, I decided to give that lonely, dapper attendant a customer. It was an extension of my commandeering of the Jolly Fisherman as a piece of quintessentially British culture; here was our Melancholic Pump-Attendant, symbol of America’s past.

The other design that ‘borrows’ a slice of US culture is Made In America, based on Saul Steinberg’s celebrated New Yorker cover. This idea lent itself particularly well to this book, allowing me plenty of scope for scattering textual references across the country (some of them very subtle for those prepared to look hard) and providing a US-centric view without being sniffily anti-American. 

I believe it is important to give clever, witty writing a cover that does it justice; something that is not only visually arresting, but also has layers that only reveal themselves as the book is read. It’s vital also never to underestimate the visual literacy of readers.

How do you get to finished artwork – do you work up a rough, or do you go straight to finished artwork?

Each design goes through the same stages, the first of which is panicky reading and note-taking, convinced that no ideas will come; that this will be the book that finally exposes me as a fraud. The notes give way to scribbled thumbnail sketches, the visual equivalent of thinking out loud. Ultimately these develop into more refined, full-size pencil sketches and colour samples, which go off to Bill for approval, and then through the Transworld cover meeting. At this stage, a careful balance must be struck between giving a clear idea of one’s intentions while still holding something back to provide (one hopes) that ‘wow’ moment on presenting the final art.

What’s the relationship between the lettering and the images?  

That’s a tricky question. In this instance, the author and most of the titles are well known, a built-in level of awareness that gives a head-start in catching a reader’s attention. The most practical difficulty posed by the titles themselves is the variation in length. The pithy title At Home and the expansive The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid both have to sit comfortably within the same space. Other than noting this potential pitfall, I tend to ignore the title and simply respond to the text. It’s very gratifying how, through doing this, connections between title and image create themselves – the chalky track on The Road to Little Dribbling, for example; the odd juxtaposition of Northern Lights over Istanbul on Neither Here Nor There; the way the Lost Continent is hinted at beyond the dark trees on that cover. The connections are not always obvious, are often just subliminal, but are unmistakeably there.

What materials do you use for painting these illustrations, and what makes you choose them?  

The covers are painted entirely in gouache (for the record, Winsor & Newton if there’s a year’s free supply on offer). They provided just the right feel for One Summer and The Road to Little Dribbling – a period poster feel for the former; fresh, flat colours for the latter. Much of Bill’s writing is affectionately nostalgic, and gouache, deployed in carefully gauged palettes, nods to this without being too backward looking. It also has a freshness in print, a vividness that I hope complements Bryson’s writing. He can make familiar words fizz with new life on the page and I try to achieve something similar with imagery.

Where do you work?

I have a lovely, airy loft studio in our house on the edge of Lewes in Sussex. Painted a pale yellow, it is my ivory tower with a great view of the South Downs and Ouse Valley.

Are you inspired by that landscape?

As a constant backdrop to my life, yes. But it’s more trifling things that really thrill me and feed into my work. My pulse can be quickened by a shapely espresso cup, or an elegant shirt. One of the most visually striking things I’ve seen lately was a website devoted to Argentine bus-tickets: the combinations of colour and type on the cheapest paper were breathtaking. I also have a sizeable collection of old atlases, maps and guide-books, which never fail to get the creative juices flowing.

What else are you working on at the moment?

I’ve recently finished working with Raymond Blanc and Sir Roy Strong on two elaborate private commissions which were, as you’ll imagine, most entertaining and edifying. There are always plenty of book-jackets on the go and illustrated maps to be painted for anything from book endpapers to the sides of London cabs to Anya Hindmarch tote bags.

I am currently collaborating on a book with author Alex Preston, about which we should be able to say more soon.  In short, I don’t have a career so much as a joke that’s got way out of hand. It’s crept up on me in a way, over many years.

Comic artist and illustrator Jon McNaught discusses the inspiration and process behind his cover for Number 11 by Jonathan Coe, featuring an iceberg house with the expansive basement levels hidden by the title band. 

What is the inspiration behind your style of illustration?

A lot of my process comes from working as a printmaker, building the image up colour by colour in the same way that I would when creating a print. For the Number 11 cover we wanted to create a distinctly English feel, so I looked at classic British printmakers and designers, such as Edward Bawden, Gwen White and Eric Ravilious. 

It was important for the cover to feel contemporary though, and to reflect the humour and inventiveness of the novel, so I tried to treat it almost like a comic strip, leading the viewer around the image with its own visual narratives.

How did you come up with the cover for Number 11?

One of the many story threads of Number 11 involves an elaborate basement conversion on a Chelsea mansion, extending 11 floors deep into the ground. The art director Richard Bravery approached me with the initial concept of using the basement on the cover, and sent me the manuscript asking me to make some sketches.

I really enjoyed reading the novel, and it was immediately clear that the basement was a perfect place to start in coming up with the cover. A Google search of ‘Chelsea mansion basement’ brought up some architectural plans of recent elaborate conversions, often including swimming pools, gyms and multi-tiered garages. These real life examples were so absurdly extravagant (often spreading to fill an underground space much larger than the house) that they almost read like satirical cartoons on their own merit, showing over- accumulation of wealth.

I immediately set to work drawing from Jonathan Coe’s description in the novel, and trying to show this extravagant construction spreading out beneath the ordinary life of the city above.

What elements of the book were you wanting to convey?

Number 11 is a very richly plotted novel, with lots of interweaving stories, so I had a great time trying to feature each narrative within the cover. The top half of the cover is a composite image of all the buildings featured in the narrative, and within this there are many small nods to moments in the book.

The main aim of the design though was to show the imbalance of wealth in society that Coe explores in the novel. In order to do this we wanted to create a narrative within the cover that reveals itself to the reader on closer examination. It’s only on removing the title band on the book that you discover the expanse of the basement below, and I enjoyed playing with the contrast between these two elements of the illustration.

What’s your creative process from getting an idea, to making it?

Once we had come up with the initial concept, I began the process by closely re-reading the manuscript of the novel, making notes and sketches of the elements that would fit into this cover scene as I went through. I created many thumbnail sketches of different compositions of the image before getting to work on the final artwork. 

Once we had agreed on a final sketch and it had been approved by Jonathan Coe, I sketched out the final artwork on graph paper, and begun to paint the colour layers separately as individual overlays with a brush using black ink on drawing film. These were then scanned and composited together in Photoshop to create the final artwork.

What are you working on next?

To celebrate the release of The Penguin Lessons, by Tom Michell, we've asked cover illustrator Neil Baker to tell us about how he went about creating the stunning hand-drawn illustrations that punctuate the book. 

I am slightly obsessed by monochromatic birds. There, I’ve said it. I love Oystercatchers, Avocets, Puffins, Guillemots, Razorbills, Storks and Herons but most of all I adore Penguins. So, you could say that illustrating The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell was a dream job for me.

Birds have often featured in my work, so imagine the excitement when I received a call asking me to draw some penguins for Penguin! I was a little overwhelmed. As a filmmaker and animator, I had never been commissioned to do an illustration before, let alone a book cover for the most iconic name in publishing. So why me?

Six years ago, as a break from my day job I began working on an illustrated series drawing every living species of penguin in Indian ink with tight and often messy hatching. I posted the series online and made prints available. It was these images that Penguin Art Director Nick Shah happened upon. Initially the idea was to do the cover art, but the project grew to include internal illustrations and some animated sequences of Juan Salvado de Pinguino.

I threw myself into it creating numerous rough sketches from anatomically accurate depictions of Magellanic Penguins to the softer edged more characterful version we settled upon. I created draft concepts digitally using some of the amazing “ink” and “watercolour” brushes in Photoshop created by Kyle Webster. Though the illustrations were done digitally, drawn via a tablet into photoshop, they still have a hand drawn feel as there are imperfections, which I consciously left in. All the cross-hatching was painstakingly done by hand giving the illustrations real tangibility and texture.

Cross hatching and mark making is something I have always done in my work; I like to use a variety of marks to create texture and a suggestion of shade and find it is especially effective in ink to achieve what can be quite stylised, graphic-looking images with depth and texture.

The work of journalist and comic artist Joe Sacco is intricate and cross-hatch-heavy, and has influenced me a lot over the years. Other influences that I often draw upon are the work of Charley Harper, and natural history illustration and field sketching in general. I am especially drawn to 18th and 19th century lithographs including work based on the sketches of Sydney Parkinson and the later bird illustrators such as John Audubon.

Of course as well as creating the cover for the book I also worked in the same manner to create the multiple illustrations of the Juan Salvador de Pinguino inside the book and the “sprats” that punctuate the pages. When working on these I was often thinking of the Paddington books that I read as a child, that are filled with energetic drawings by Peggy Fortnum. I wanted in my own way to give a brief glimpse of the character of Juan Salvador who has such a strong character and enigmatic quality.

I feel very lucky to have been a part of this project; it is in many ways a bit of a dream come true to work on this. Penguins are the very pinnacle of my obsession with monochromatic birds. Once it was the “Gentoo” breed of penguin that captured my imagination the most, now Juan Salvador may have just pushed the Magellanic Penguin into the top spot.

Copyright Sanna Annukka

Artist, printmaker, and textile designer Sanna Annukka discusses her beautiful reworking of the Hans Christian Andersen classic The Snow Queen, with stunning illustrations inspired by her Finnish roots. 

What is the inspiration behind your style of illustration?

I'm a big fan of the design scene from the late 50s and 60s, particularly from the Nordic countries, and if I'm being even more specific- from Finland. Being half Finnish and with both parents into collecting Finnish glassware and ceramics during my childhood, I grew up appreciating a lot of Finnish design. Not just for what my parents collected but for graphic design, textiles (both woven and printed forms), sculpture, architecture and jewellery also. What appealed across all these different mediums was the bold simplicity in which themes were interpreted. It certainly influenced my desire to use bold shapes and pattern in my own work.

A lot of my work is based on nature and the landscapes of where I spent my childhood summers in northern Finland. Nature is possibly the core motif behind Finnish design- there is a massive respect for it. I think that's why so much Finnish design appeals to me.

I'm also fascinated by old traditions and folklore particularly from Karelia where some of my family roots are from. I see my work as a way of keeping that alive by way of storytelling. Celebrating the old but interpreting it in a refreshed and new manner.

Copyright Sanna Annukka

Why did you choose the story of The Snow Queen? Were you familiar with this tale as a child?

The theme really suited my work. A winter setting, forests, northern lights, not forgetting the Snow Queen! There was so much exciting content to illustrate. Also with the success of Frozen, considered a modern interpretation of The Snow Queen, it was nice to have a nod back to the traditional tale which has been a favourite of mine since childhood.

Who is your favourite character in the story?

The Snow Queen! I love when she is introduced into the story as a snowflake that grew bigger and bigger until it last turned into a woman 'who was dressed in the finest white gauze, which looked as if it had been made from millions of star-shaped flakes'. I really enjoyed illustrating her.

But also a favourite is the old lady with the flower hat that Gerda meets on her journey to find Kay. Her face alone took me three weeks to get right! I was so happy when I finally achieved it. Thankfully, not all the illustrations took that long!

Copyright Sanna Annukka

Talk us through your creative process from getting an idea, to bringing it alive.

I start with loads of sketching. Quite a lot of time is spent experimenting with composition and trying to push the boundaries with it. It can be very easy to illustrate something quite literally.

So the key challenge is to be visually as inventive as possible so that it heightens intrigue and therefore enjoyment for the reader. Once there is a potential contender for the composition, I scan the drawing and construct the rest of the design on the computer using illustrator.

At the beginning of this project I also researched all other illustrated versions of the Snow Queen so that I wouldn't end up illustrating the same kind of scenes. I also compiled Pinterest mood boards of all sorts of reference material from wintery settings to golden carriages.

What tools do you use?

Pens, paper, a scanner app on my phone and then many long hours using illustrator.

What are you working on next?

I have just recently finished designing my latest homewares collection for Marimekko, with the collection releasing next Christmas (2016).

I've also just started working with tapestry. I really look forward to realising my designs in this new medium.

So watch this space!

Artist and Illustrator Ed Vere takes us into his studio, where he brought Max the Brave to life, and discusses the design process behind his latest book Max at Night. 

What’s the inspiration behind Max at Night?

The night. I had a sense that visually I wanted to make a book about night-time, something with more colour subtlety and a sense of scale & depth. The first book, Max the Brave is much punchier colour wise with sparer text... this book I wanted to be more lyrical, so there's a very different sense to the writing.

 It's hard to know where inspiration comes from... sometimes you find it along the way. The colour, the sense of place and the way it’s written all informed each other and each grew as the book developed.

 And of course cats and night just go together.

 Where do you work?

I work in my studio in Hackney, East London. It's full of light and just by Regent's Canal, an area full of creative people. I love it there, it's a complete sanctuary. And the canal is a good place to think up ideas whilst the coots swim past.

 What is your design process?

It's quite simple... to look at the world and attempt to absorb some of it, and then let myself be led by my instincts.

 What tools do you use?

Tools... That's a strong word... Can eyes and hands be tools? If not, I'd say a pencil, a dip pen & ink, paper... and Photoshop.

 Where do you get inspiration from?

My inspiration comes from many places; from reading, from looking at the world around us... the dynamics between people, human behaviour. Really, from just being curious about what makes things, and us, tick.

 What do you listen to?

It depends on my mood. Sometimes nothing... When I'm writing I like a clear mental space with nothing to influence my thinking. When I'm drawing I listen to many things, I have completely eclectic tastes... It might be Hot Chip, or Cinematic Orchestra, maybe Radio 4, 6 or 3...  It could be Bach's Goldberg variations... I'm partial to music from Mali at the moment... Ali Farka Toure is worth a listen if you don't know him.

 Which other designers do you admire?

Designers... The Eames's because they were so varied and human. Jonathan Ive... because he's had a huge effect on the way I work... and it works well.  People who make pictures for books with a sense of design... Tomi Ungerer, Jon Klassen, Jan Pieńkowski, Chris Haughton, David McKee, J Otto Siebald.

 What’s your advice for budding writers?

Senior Creative and Digital Copywriter Colin Brush talks us through his favourite covers from the Penguin Science Fiction postcards collection. 

Emad’s made some good choices in his selection of his favourite covers, but he is clearly wrong about the five most notable book jackets. I, as writer of blurbs on the BACK of books, am here to correct those mistakes. 

Let’s kick things off with Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man, with a cover by David Pelham. Possibly most famous for his iconic cover of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange as well as his series of covers for JG Ballard’s early work, Pelham opts to paint The Demolished Man almost literally – we get an image of something that resembles a kind of robot head exploding. The Demolished Man is a deeply Freudian work and so the idea of deconstruction – or, more simply, destruction – perfectly captures the thematic nature of the story.

Speaking of J. G. Ballard, my next selection is The Wind from Nowhere, the author’s first novel, which he later derided as ‘hackwork’ and subsequently prevented any new editions being issued. This cover is by Alan Aldridge, who worked briefly as Penguin’s Art Director and also was the artist for The Beatles Illustrated Song Lyrics. Aldridge’s image for The Wind from Nowhere is typically surreal, having towers bent backwards like trees in a gale. I particularly like the Katsushika Hokusai-inspired waves.

Next we have Fredrick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth’s 1952-novel The Space Merchants, in a 1979 cover by Adrian Chesterman. The Space Merchants is set in a future Earth which is terribly overpopulated, where vast megacorporations hold all political power. It concerns a copywriter (no that’s not why I chose it – well a little bit) who, through a series of adventures, discovers the truth behind the Capitalist lies he is selling to the general populace. I love the city skyline on the cover, made as it is of rockets just waiting to blast off to another planet. It reminds me of Blade Runner’s airships dropping down from a dark, wet sky selling the chance ‘To begin again . . .’ off-world. We all know such dreams are lies, right?

My fourth choice is another David Pelham. This time it is for Michael Moorcock’s A Cure for Cancer, the second book in his seminal Jerry Cornelius quartet. Cornelius is a counter-culture James Bond, by which I mean he stands against everything Bond epitomizes. He is louche, cowardly, crazed, hip, disloyal, frequently killed off and as frequently born again, transformed. In A Cure for Cancer, Jerry exists as a negative version of himself with black skin and white hair travelling through an England occupied by American armies. It is a dark and twisted take on that dark and twisted American misadventure – the Vietnam war. Pelham’s image of a skull-faced blonde (or possibly Jerry himself?), needle-gun in nail-painted hand, grinning at the viewer under a setting sun remains as startling and disturbing now as it was in 1973.

Lastly, we have Keith Roberts’ alternate English history, Pavane, with this cover by David O’Conner. Pavane parts company with our common history with the assassination of Elizabeth the First, which returns the country to the Catholic faith and ensures the dominion of Papal Rome across the world for the next four hundred years. The novel consists of a series of interlinked short stories, exploring this feudal world of retarded technology, where traction engines and an extensive system of mechanical semaphore signalling devices provide the backbone of the country. Meanwhile insurgents and raiders and even fairy folk stalk the land waylaying the unwary. O’Connor’s striking cover invites us to step into another world.

That’s my five. Clearly a better five than Emad’s. We’ll be flicking postcards at one another at dawn, I suspect.

But the real question is – what are your five?

Colin Brush

Senior Creative and Digital Copywriter

The Penguin by Hand collection is six of Penguin’s best-loved titles written by women in recent years, each with a beautiful craft-inspired jacket.

Designer Helen Musselwhite talks about the inspiration behind her cover for Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club, and the art of working with paper. 

What aspects of The Jane Austen Book Club did you want to convey on the cover of the book?

The book is set in California so I used Californian poppies as a starting point and bright colours to convey West Coast sunshine. The structure of the cover is inspired by Georgian calling cards and paying further respect to its namesake I've used text from vintage copies of Jane Austen novels printed onto painted sheets of watercolour paper.

What were the challenges of creating a book cover using paper crafting?

The design of the cover relies on symmetry and it took a while to align and glue all the elements. Often what looks level and aligned on the flat plane of my desk isn’t when the artwork is seen vertically which is how its photographed so there’s a lot of measuring and nudging left and right and up and down until everything is level and as symmetrical as manually possible.

What’s your creative process from getting an idea, to making it?

When I get a brief I make quick thumbnail sketches of initial ideas and I often annotate them too. As I'm sketching I think about a colour palette and look though my many drawers of papers cutting swatches to photograph and show alongside my sketches. The thumbnails get edited to the stronger ideas, these are enlarged on a photocopier and copied and clarified onto tracing paper so they are neat line drawings. Often, as with this project, I photocopy the line drawings onto cartridge paper and paint them to show how the colour will work.

My finished idea sketches are very close to how the finished papercut will look. The line drawn elements are then traced onto the reverse of the coloured papers, cut out and then glued. Photography is the last stage.

Who taught you the art of paper crafting? What’s your background in design?

I taught myself papercutting; I haven’t yet learnt to use digital means to make my work so I use analogue methods instead! Really it’s just like colouring in but with papers that I manipulate in various ways – analogue vectors I suppose…I like the act and methodical nature of making.

My background in design includes stints in graphic design, jewellery making and maker of painted MDF home accessories. My work now combines disciplines from each of my previous incarnations but it’s less messy and a lot more cost effective (gold and silver are a lot harder to recycle!).

What is it about this medium that you love?

I love that at the beginning of each new project I have draws full of flat, unassuming pieces of paper full of potential but that give no clue as to what they might become until I decide. All I have are line drawings and a picture in my head. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it adapts and changes as I make.

What else is in the pipeline for you at the moment?

I have just had my first children picture book published. It’s a counting book based on little houses from around the world all made from paper of course!

What about the project did you enjoy the most?

I can honestly say I enjoyed all of this project, working with Gill (Heeley) was great and I can still recall the excitement of her initial email asking me if I’d like to work on the project. I can’t wait to see all of the beautiful covers together in my local bookshop and further afield!

What’s your favourite book?

Favourite book-­‐ that’s hard! I'm cheating bit as it’s not a single title but a cycle of 20 -­‐Emile Zola’s Rougon /Macquart Novels. I started reading them about 15 years ago and they've stayed with me. In fact it might be time to start reading them again!

The Penguin by Hand collection is six of Penguin’s best-loved titles written by women in recent years, each with a beautiful craft-inspired jacket.

Designer Dominque Falla talks about the inspiration behind her cover for Kim Edwards’s The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, and the art of tactile typography. 

What aspects of The Memory Keeper's Daughter did you want to convey on the cover of the book?

The original book cover that Penguin released featured a delicate little nightdress and was a midnight blue and soft pink, so we really wanted to reflect that in the new cover. I also wanted it to be quite delicate all over, so the custom typography was quite fluid and curly.

What were the challenges of creating a book cover using your typographical style?

The main issue is size. The piece has to be very large to allow for all of the words. It was a long title and I also had to wind the author’s name in string as well. Each letter has quite a few nails around the edge to define the details of the letter, so it was a balance between detail and size. The final board was around 1.6 metres by .9 so any larger and I wouldn’t be able to reach across. I had to make the front, back and spine all as separate pieces and they were put together in Photoshop.

What’s your creative process from getting an idea, to making it? 

I’m a big advocate of keeping a journal and I write in it every morning. This is always where I start to generate ideas and sketches. Then I sent my sketches, in this case to Alison the art director. We went backwards and forwards refining the sketches and placement of the type and nightdress until we were both happy. Once the sketch is approved, I buy materials, paint the MDF boards and lay out the pattern at full size. Then it is just a case of hammering the nails and winding the string, then photographing the works and putting them all together in Photoshop.

Who taught you the art of typography? What’s your background in design?

I have studied typography and graphic design at university for 11 years. I have a Bachelor, Masters and Doctorate in the subject, believe it or not. My recent move away from the computer and into tactile materials was part of my doctoral study. I witnessed a return to the hand made in recent years because we are so used to digital now. I love that crafts and handmade typography is being showcased in this series and I feel there is a real benefit to combining the best of hand and digital. 

What is it about this medium that you love?

I’m a digital native and have been using a computer to make design since Photoshop version 2, so getting to play with string, nails, fabric and paint is really exciting. I also love how people respond to my work. They really love the tactile response, even if they don’t get to touch it. I love that the covers of the books are embossed so people reading the books will have a tactile response.

What about the project did you enjoy the most?  

I always love working with string and I love collaborating with really creative art directors. I never know quite how something is going to work out, the process is very spontaneous in a way, so it is always nice to see the finished product. I really enjoyed being part of a series as well.

What else is in the pipeline for you at the moment?

I have just finished stringing hearts on a kangaroo sculpture for the Hop for Hope project and we are in discussions with two installation projects in the US.

What’s your favourite book? 

As a child, I loved Tove Jansson’s Moomin books. in recent years, Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way has changed my life and continues to change my life as an artist.