My vision for the cover of Not All There was monochromatic minimalism. I knew that the content of the book would be quite intense and I did not want bright colours or aggressive imagery to overwhelm the reader before they had even picked up the book.
There is a lot of imagery in the book and I left it in the hands of the designer, Jane Langan, to pick one image to feature on the cover. Originally she choose a a black and white design with flowers, and image taken from quite early on in the novella.
This first design didn’t work out for a number of reasons, and we went back to the drawing board, and refocused.
I originally took my inspiration from some classic book covers, that had been made with lithographic prints or hand printed, they often had frames or embodied the story of the novel int the title font chosen. At this point we changed from black and white to grey. This decision was beneficial as the text is much more clearly read on a grey background, and I do think it is a fitting colour.
Having the title fade away until it is ‘not all there’ was a very important decision, particularly as we decided to what extent and if it gets the message across.
So much can be said with a book cover, it doesn’t just tell the reader the title of the book and the author. There are some really tough decisions in there. Good luck to all those working it out for themselves!