enjoy this interview between rachel hyman and designer angela protzman, who made the beautiful cover of rachel’s dear s., now in luck. Angela can be reached for design inquiries at: paperstarships@gmail.com
Rachel Hyman: I basically sent you the manuscript with not a lot of direction, apart from Big Lucks’ style guidelines, and was like “uhhh work your magic please.” How did you generate design ideas? What was the process like that got you from reading the manuscript to creating mockups?
You are reading: H ngm n books
angela protzman: I wanted to be able to reflect some of the feelings I got from the poems in a visual way, which can be particularly difficult when you need to portray things that aren’t explicitly visual. there are many pictures throughout dear s. some visualizations seem obvious at first, but then it becomes hard to describe the image you get in your head because so much of it is just feeling; it was difficult to decide on ideas that would end up trying to represent the value of an entire chapter of these sentiments. I ended up creating a variety of illustrations in my attempts.
RH: I had such a hard time choosing just one from the original mockups you sent. I felt like they all captured slices of the chapbook in a different way. Which was your favorite of the ones that didn’t make the cut, and why?
ap: One of my favorites was an illustration of an old peach with a moth crawling on it. there are several moments in dear s that aim to find the beauty in the regular / in life and death at all stages. Another favorite ended up being a sort of nod to an illustration that NASA sent with the Voyager spacecraft in ’77: a graphic that attempts to show where our sun is in our galaxy, in case someone new to humanity finds it. I’ve simplified the diagram and replaced all the binary notes with dashed lines (turns out someone has since fixed a calculation, anyway) for one of the cover options. it felt like a connection that made sense to some of the feelings in dear s, of being so big and so small and having very little tangible control over all of that…besides trying to record it and save what we know for the unknown. in the future, and share it however we can.
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RH: I had no idea that one mockup was a reference to a NASA thing. So cool. I love it even more now, and your interpretation of it. Can you talk about some projects where your client or partner had more rigid requirements than the ones you’ve had for my and Banango’s projects? How do you maintain creative freedom while still turning out a product that both sides are happy with?
ap: This is a difficult question to answer, mainly because the less creative freedom I have for a project, the more likely I am contractually obligated not to talk about it. Those kinds of projects often come from a full-time job, when I have to design within strict guidelines that depend on what the client or product already has in place. they usually want to sell or publicize something, so as a designer, it’s your job to try to achieve their goals and maintain your creative integrity.
In the end, no one can force you to represent anything in a particular way. even with the worst restrictions, I could usually come up with at least a few options that I could support and that a customer could choose from. sometimes it takes months of back and forth to come to a compromise, but that usually just means finding more options that I like, to come up with a design that they like too.
rh: As a designer, do you often look at book covers, chapbooks, etc.? how does it influence the way you approach a text, if at all? Do you have any favorite designers/covers you’d like to mention? (I love Alban Fischer’s work).
ap: I do notice the covers, although I try not to judge them too much, mainly because there are so many great books and brochures with terrible covers, or even no covers at all. I’m quite fond of unofficial covers – the fox is black and used to run these salvage book contests and I really like that idea (and should probably look into similar ones now that I’m thinking about it again). I really like to see what people who are fans of a particular work come up with in an attempt to depict classic stories that already have such iconic imagery.
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alban fischer is fantastic. If I had to pick the favorite covers he’s done, it would be the ones where he shows what he can do with collage (like some of the curbside splendor covers and the birds llc cover).
some favorite covers/artists: daniel clowes, rodrigo corral, the cover for dry: a memior (augusten burroughs), the cover for the man suit (zachary schomburg)
rh: Aside from design, what have you been reading/watching/listening to lately that caught your attention?
ap: summer is over and we’re not saved yet by joey comeau was a pretty fun horror read. general. nathan to you, rick & morty and steven universe have to be my favorite shows on tv right now.
Music wise, Hop Along’s new album is pretty excellent and I don’t think it will ever top any of the previous ones. parquet courts is on tour right now and i’m missing every stop, light up gold has got to be one of my favorite albums of all time and i can’t wait to get a chance to see them play live. I also try to keep up with the bands in terms of sound explosion; I don’t think they hired anyone who I couldn’t completely fall in love with.
See Also: Mark Dawson – Book Series In Order