What Are You Going Through

Book Cover Design and Illustration

I designed a conceptual book cover for the Sigrid Nuñez novel “What Are You Going Through”, and translated the design into an audiobook thumbnail and a poster.

Cover Design

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Styles

Concept

Human connection arising from the intimacy of individual stories. The joy and sadness of this connection.

The cover for “What Are You Going Through” conveys a heartfelt balance of cheer/optimism (yellow) and solemnity (blue).

The interconnected loose faces represent the stories the narrator collected from different people and the need for human connection demonstrated by all of the characters. The facial expressions show the gamut of emotions in the book: anger, shock, despair, happiness. (And there is still a cat.)

The words on the cover go THROUGH the image, in a reference to the title.

The display type, Swear Display, is a little bit quirky, which addresses the humorous aspects of the book, but the serifs add a more literary tone.

Design Process

Brief

“What Are You Going Through” is about a woman, the unnamed narrator, whose long-time friend is dying of cancer. The friend asks the narrator to accompany her on a trip, so that she can end her own life in peace. Themes of the book are women aging, fear of death, relationships/friendships, the different forms of love, the need for connection, passage of time and regret, and intimacy. Despite the serious themes, the book has plenty of light, humorous moments. Sigrid Nunez, the author, is a National Book Award winner.

The target audience considers reading to be an intellectual pursuit, not just for entertainment. They may read book reviews in the New York Times or hear about books on NPR. Since the book discusses aging, they may be 40+. But the book could appeal to a much wider audience because its themes are universal and the writing style is direct.

The goal is to design a book cover that grabs readers’ attention on the shelf and conveys the book’s concept and mood, rather than its literal content.

Research Insights

Most of the existing covers for the book center on the cat in the story. (For context, the cat is a minor character, but memorable because he speaks to the narrator.) I love cats and enjoyed these covers. I can understand how it would appeal to readers, but the cat is only one of a cast of characters whose interconnected stories add meaning to this book.

Most of the covers used blue and/or yellow and I found this to be a smart combination to convey the contrast of sadness and happiness in the book.

In the top row, a selection of existing book cover designs. In the bottom row, other illustrations that I found accompanying reviews and blurbs of the book.

Theme Boards and Moodboard

In the theme boards, I collected images related to confronting death, connection, and women aging/crone archetypes (shown below from left to right). In the moodboard, I focused on collecting images that would show the emotions behind these themes: human intimacy, love, interconnection, loss, and grief; and the blue and yellow color palette (the furthest image to the right below).

Brainstorming and Sketches

Digital Drafts - Round 1

Digital Drafts - Round 2

Clockwise from top left, versions go from earlier to later and move through a range of blue backgrounds

Illustration Process

Traced favorite faces from various sketches onto outline

Challenges

Finding the right blue. My initial blue was a beautiful periwinkle that vibrated too much. I continued in the vein of lighter blues, but realized the yellow type would only pop and be legible if the background blue was darker. I’m learning to be careful about testing all of the colors on top of each other before using them in a project.
Texture. I received feedback to add texture to the cover. I’ve noticed that my designs don’t always have a lot of texture so I’ve been observing how other designers do texture. There are a lot of possible approaches to texture! First I tried scanning some of my earlier face sketches, layering them on top of each other, and adding them as an opaque background, but it was messy looking. My eventual solution, as you’ll see below in the final design, was to riff on an earlier rejected concept: two people on a bed floating in water, which refers to a pivotal scene in the book. I decided to use water as an opaque background. Water fits with the color scheme, with the squiggly lines, and with the fluidity of emotions I want to convey.

Reflection

I was excited about this project because I love books and covers are one important factor for me in choosing a book to read. It was hard to choose which book to do a cover for because there were so many I thought would be fun to illustrate, but I had read this book recently and was touched and surprised by it.

During this process, I felt that a book cover is a perfect space to play with ideas because it has different areas, each with its own size and purpose: the flaps, the front, the back, and the spine.

I also really liked using InDesign. I found in my old notes on this project that I was still struggling to bring my visualizations and drawings to life with Adobe Illustrator, as I was still learning the tool. I don’t remember the struggle, and I’m happy with the way my illustration turned out.

In the future I would love to try designing a sci-fi book cover because I like the idea of bringing an imagined world to life on the page.