Alice Laurent on Designing Ghosted
Alice Laurent is a graphic designer based in Lausanne, Switzerland who specialises in book design. Here she takes us through her design process for Ghosted.
The brief for Ghosted was the kind you wish you’d get more often. The editor asked for ‘something arresting and unusual’ and I was given a few photographs from the picture editor. That was it. So my brain wasn’t too clogged-up with book references or conventions to follow. I started looking for inspiration: I was mainly looking for fresh photographers and illustrators - something to tell a story in a simple way, to add a dimension to the few story lines I was given. This is a contemporary love story, with dark humour, a missing man, and a lot of uncertainties. Many of the images I was finding were of men or women without identities: a pair of legs, women illustrated from behind with simple hair to look like everybody or nobody and curtains being pulled to keep a secret.
There were a lot of flowers too. They seemed to indicate something romantic and gruesome at the same time. I liked how they could be used to signal your love for someone during their lifetime and in death, and given we didn’t know if her husband was dead or alive, it was fitting. This led me to the collage by Frank Moth and I really liked the humour and romance of it. My choice of font was fairly easy as I wanted something distressed and bold. And the image was already quite dark so a warm colour made sense.
I did 11 initial visuals for this cover and shared them all. I hadn’t read the full book, so I might have been missing something the editor or the author might see in one of them. I generally don’t shy away from showing breadth of ideas early in the process, as even if I don’t like them I’m not the one to please and I learn from what works and doesn’t. But I do like to stand up and explain why you shouldn’t mix covers and pick-and-choose something here and move it there. I believe that’s what designers should be able to do: talk confidently about our work and explain our choices so that editors and authors can make educated choices and clear visual stories.
Initially the editor was uncertain about the choice of font - I think it was a bit too edgy. I explained that the busy image needed a bold font to cut through and its grungy feel balanced out the 'prettiness' of the collage. I also originally had 'A Love Story' patterned into the background as I liked how it illustrated the busy mind of the protagonist. But it distracted from the simplicity of the illustration and typography so we dropped it.
Two visuals of the original 11 went into the final selection and the final cover was a clear winner for editor and author, so it helped guide decision making. This is what the author had to say about it:
‘My favorite is the one with the flowers over the face... I really like the oddness and the boldness of that image - I think this is a book that needs a cover that communicates that it is lively and some of the others don't quite do that. I think something a bit ragged and grungy [for the type] is needed to contrast with the flowers. When I see that cover, I think of Laurie, and all the weird and tangled things that go on in her head, overflowing into the outside world, and I also think of Mark - and the way he's totally hidden by Laurie's self-absorbedness and remains a bit of a mystery.’
Cover briefs often have too much detail, too many pre-conceived ideas or refer to much to existing covers. This wasn’t the case for this cover. That, combined with trust and understanding of one another’s jobs and expertise between all those involved led this cover to be what it is.
Final cover
Full cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.