July… it’s time for the sea, relaxation and reading on the beach, so this month we will dedicate it to covers and their creators.
Ivo Rafailov
Education: Cultural studies, Sofia University.
Professional experience: I have been a freelancer for eight years and have been designing books. Before that, I was in advertising design for about five years.
Exhibitions/projects/awards: Golden Brush Award from the Plovdiv Reads Festival 2018
What does it actually mean to make covers? Tell us about your process. In the beginning, there is the call or letter from the publisher assigning me the book, I mention it because for me, this moment is always associated with the fear that I have reached a point where there is no way for anything to come to my mind. Then I read the book and things fall into place. The language of each text manages to bring me into its own world, from which something inevitably pops out. I choose the format of the publication according to the text – the length of the stories, if it is a collection of stories, the length of the chapters in novels, the graphic of the verse in books of poetry. I make variants, usually three different readings of the book, which I propose. The author or publisher chooses the one that coincides with their view. Sometimes they trust my opinion, my favorite among the ones that have been done, other times corrections are necessary. In these cases, my ego stays aside, because if things end with the cover for me, they will live with it for a long time. There are also cases in which the author has a preliminary idea of how he wants his book to look. This does not cancel the stage of reading and offering alternatives.
Is the cover an illustration? I try to avoid this, if we assume that the illustration follows the text too literally. I try rather to capture one of the ideas in the book and turn it into an image, a symbol or even a metaphor on the cover. The language and style of the author also play a role here, according to which I choose my approach.
Cover, what work do you dream of creating? Of one of my favorite books – “Moby Dick” or “Divine Comedy”. But, if it happens, I hope it will be later in my life.
What do people most often NOT know about the cover of a book or the process of its creation? Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned or just conservative, but I believe that in a book the text remains the most important thing. In this sense, the cover only serves. If it can’t help the text, to highlight it, at least it should try not to hinder it, not to belittle it unnecessarily. With the bolder and original books, I allow myself to approach it in an original way.
Of course, sometimes publishers have marketing strategies that go along with their own requirements, but it seems to happen that people who have more confidence in my approach approach me.
Favorite examples that made you pick up a book because of its cover? My wife recently gave me an old edition of Moby Dick with Rockwell Kent illustrations, which she found in a box. Years ago, I flipped through Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year, attracted by the layout, but I still bought it for the text. I've noticed that the literature I'm interested in is usually well-designed, at least to my taste.
Add comment