Henry Sene Yee on Designing Poetry Collection Mezzanine
Henry Sene Yee is a book cover designer, photographer and illustrator who lives in New York. Here he takes us through his process for designing the cover of Zoe Hetzig’s Mezzanine.
Ding. You’ve got mail.
“Hi Henry,
I have a lovely little project I’m hoping you’ll take on. It’s a debut poetry collection, which means you’d have VERY free license to read and interpret the poems to give us something interesting, quiet, and literary… how often do you get asked that?!?
- Allison Saltzman, Art Director / Ecco Books / HarperCollins Publishers”
——-
A free license to interpret?
This is the type of direction you want to get, but can sometimes be overwhelming when it’s so open ended. No book project is ever easy. I’ll need to define the problem before I can set goals to solve it.
My approach to designing book covers is usually the same. I free associate and jot down words and scribble thumbnails of anything that comes to mind as I read the manuscript.
Non-fiction imagery are often times portraits of actual people, objects, or locations from history. For fiction/novels, I may have more freedom to create my own imagery, but the focus on detail accuracy can become a stumbling block. Do the characters look like as described from the book, their clothing, age, hairstyle, skin color, chariot, etc? It can all get too nit-picky and literal. I tend to not include such specific details in my work but try to focus more on the book’s emotional tone and mood.
For poetry and short stories, the title usually comes from a story within and possibly evokes the overall tone of the collection. Or it can just sound cool. I look to that story for interesting imagery, colors, typefaces, busy or minimal use of space, something that suggest the flow and rhythm, anything. I think with poetry and short stories, you can be more abstract and surreal and play with interesting juxtapositions.
I’ve included my thumbnail sketches for Mezzanine by Zoé Hitzig. I sketch all my project notes in a 7.5” x 9.5” Moleskine softcover notebook writing with a black 0.38 Uniball Signo DX pen for nice precise, uncluttered fine lines, and a BIC Multicolor ballpoint pen. Sometimes used for a second color or highlighter, but mostly to doodle drawings on the sides when I’m procrastinating and would rather practice my cross-hatching.
I associated the title with a shopping mall. Escalators and revolving doors, and blocky shapes came to mind. In my head, a “mezzanine” was a structure that stuck out, like a balcony or a Mesa plateau. That’s not exactly the definition, but that’s fine, I’m going for an interesting suggestion and not literal interpretation. I sketched out typographic solutions playing with the “Z” as a protruding platform. I realized there are FOUR “Zees” in the cover copy! But no good idea came to mind to exploit that typographic rarity. In fact, I basically had just one idea that interested me and I stayed there. I honed in on the tone of her writing as,
“Her work exist in states of uncertainty and precariousness.”
That will affect how I use and arrange my cover elements.
For my first round, Allison and editorial liked the VERY cool bold typographic approach that jibes with the raucous energy and cerebral tone of the writing. But they thought the type was too playful and made the title difficult to read.
They liked the lettering arrangement on the ruby red & black jewel facet background, (something that came from another one of her poems that described RUBY EYES), but they would prefer it over a plain color background so that you can read mezzanine as a word.
The idea I liked was a protrusion. If the “Z” sticking out made the title harder to read, I would replace it with a symbolic platform anchored to the spine edge that the type could react against. I love using fifth hierarchy cover copy like “a novel” and in this case “poems” to describe emotions. All designers love to introduce hand-lettering somewhere. So having “poems” drawn as if falling but with elegance, off the balcony was set for me from the beginning.
They liked my revisions but with minor changes. I went through several painless rounds of adjusting the type treatment for more straight forward type size uniformity and author name variations, yet keeping the syncopated energy overall.
Almost there. One last change?: Can you try making the title ALL CAPS?
Allison wrote encouragingly, “Thanks Henry--seems like you hit a triple with these covers, and now just need a bunt to get home!”
I love a baseball metaphor.
The final response:
“Great news, Henry: unanimous happiness with this one (#24)!
Please collect files and send them to me, at your leisure this week or next.
And go ahead and invoice me!”
Nice! Time to reward myself and hang out at the mall and play some video games.
It was a real joy working on this project with great encouraging art direction from Allison and Ecco.
Listen to Henry’s Spine podcast interview here. And check out his awesome illustrations on Instagram.
Final cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.