Do you judge a book by its cover? Well.. let's face it, most of us do. And that's probably alright. Today we will go behind the scenes of Book Cover Design. How does one capture the essence of a book in just one beautiful image? Where do you even start? And how does the entire process unfold? These are some of the questions I'll be asking my two guests.

As with most jobs in the book industry, there's a certain romance associated with book cover design. For many, this sounds like a designer's dream job.. although very few people do book cover design full time for a living. Wherever you stand on the future of the book – bound to become a digital object, or on the contrary, a forever physical, tactile part of our cultural life – we can safely say that we are now in a golden age of book design. Step into a bookshop and you'll soon find yourself surrounded by beautiful design, from the very abstract to sharp photography. Trends in book design have ebbed and flowed over the years, with simplistic design principles becoming more pronounced in recent years. That could be because many readers now discover books online, so the book covers are designed with this in mind. There is however still book cover art made the old school way, by painters.. with actual colours and canvases. Some digital magic is then sprinkled on top to bring us the final design.

Today my guests are two quite different artists. My first guests is Terry Miura. Terry began his career in the 90s in NYC as a freelance illustrator, creating imagery for such clients as Time, Newsweek, Rollingstone, and Sports Illustrated. In between illustration assignments he painted and exhibited cityscapes, and continued his transition to becoming a full time painter after returning to the West Coast in 1996. He has recently designed the book cover for The Paris Bookseller, by Kerri Maher, the story of Shakespeare and Company's founder and one of the most famous booksellers of all time, Sylvia Beach. This book cover is also a painting, now owned by the book's author. (Here's Terry's website https://www.terrymiura.com/)

My second guest today is Darya Solomenko, a Dublin based graphic designer & illustrator, who also happens to be an old friend and former colleague of mine. She recently designed two books - Dima Golik's "I just am.", a poetry collection, and Olga Polyakova's "What, Was It Possible?", a book about building a career from the perspective of an immigrant. Darya has kindly agreed to come on Got Books to tell us all about her creative process. (Here's Darya's Portfolio https://www.solomenko.com/)

---

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/gotbooks/message