Book Cover, Book Cover Design | featured news

Scribner's art director talks about the challenges of designing the best-selling book's jacket like a JFK-era newspaper.

Every three months or so, we gather together. In our hands, launch meeting packets still hot off the copy machine. Our editor-in-chief sits at the head of the double-long conference table, and introduces us, the weary and largely bespectacled, to the newest crop of books. Over the years I've found that most editors describe their hopes and dreams for their future covers in the same ways. Please make them look "hip," "sexy," and—oh yes!—"fresh, too"! Our job as jacket designers is to keep reinterpreting these well-worn requests.