A conversation with SUP’s Art Director, Michele Wetherbee.
I’m one of SUP’s newest members on the marketing team. Since the beginning of my time here, I’ve been curious about the process of choosing artwork for our titles.
I tracked down our Art Director, Michele Wetherbee, to ask her a few questions. In this interview, she explains what makes design at a University Press unique. She also walks me through the process of how a design for a book gets chosen…
Kapani Kirkland: I understand that you’re new here, right? Both to Stanford University Press and the world of academic publishing?
Michele Wetherbee: Yes, on both accounts. I've designed and art-directed books in trade publishing at HarperOne, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Chronicle Books, and many smaller trade publishers, but I haven’t worked with a University Press.
KK: What are your impressions, especially if you compare academic publishing to trade?
MW: I'm enjoying University Press publishing a lot. Designing in a new field and building a fantastically talented freelance staff is, and has been, invigorating. In trade publishing, especially Big Five publishing, there are big expectations with extreme pressure. Trade covers are part of a commercial service: a cover sells a book in the same way that a wine label sells wine, or a beer label will sell beer.
Ideally, the book cover or wine label is an honest reflection of the content; at other times, we sell a dream.
Authors desire a powerful and reflective cover design; however, at Stanford, our covers must accurately reflect the content. I’ve quickly understood that romanticism or broad cultural brushstrokes aren’t appropriate here.
KK: What (or who) are your influences as a designer? And what will be your design voice be at SUP?
MW: I love honesty in design, that which is created with a pure, clear voice. I find a honed simplicity to be the most powerful, especially when it is packed with rich meaning simmering beneath the surface, inviting the viewer’s imagination to engage.
I’m a designer because I love creating and being surrounded by beauty. That beauty can be spatial relationships on a cover, or the relationships of an architectural space. Some covers call for the rich beauty of old maps and calligraphy or a tactile, hand-created heirloom jewel. I’m drawn to the tension of creating power and beauty while working with brutal or dystopian subjects.
I love solutions that are a little bit shocking. The wonderful aspect of the design process is that we have 150 books a year to explore a number of diverse solutions.
KK: Where does the idea for a design come from?
MW: A large part is understanding my role as a translator: I have conversations to understand the project, then we create the visuals. Designing is like a translation from the verbal to the visual.
It’s an ongoing process of getting succinct information from editorial, marketing and sales, then communicating that cohesive information to a designer who comes back with a clear solution.
And sometimes, you go through these long processes of, like, "Not that, not that, not that," and it can be a little painful. Ha ha.
KK: Ha ha.
MW: I find the process apropos to carving sculpture. You keep honing down the idea until, as Michelangelo stated, you find the angel inside.
KK: Could you walk me through the design process?
MW: One of our recent cover processes was circuitous, but we found a unique solution. Famine Worlds by Tylor Brand (which will publish in August 2023) is about famine in Lebanon during World War I. Tylor was clear from the beginning that he didn't want a sad, starving book. He wanted a cover that was symbolic.
I had hired David Drummond to design this cover. The first inspiration was a bellows camera that was popular in that historical context. We thought the upside-down photograph of Lebanon was an interesting metaphor, but editorial believed that this image wasn’t particularly unique to the book’s content.
We were keeping an idea about a symbol in mind, trying to not get too specific about starvation. The Lebanon Cedar is an important symbol and associated with the region, so David had explored ways to depict it distressed, falling away, or starving.
Here, we're trying to show the dying process, but there are still bits of life. I was happy with the solution with a small amount of green, but this symbol wasn’t resonating with marketing and editorial. Kate Wahl, SUP’s editor-in-chief, felt that it was becoming more about Lebanon rather than the book’s content: the cover was not communicating famine. So, we moved away from the cedar as a symbol, and focused on Kate’s suggestion of the locust.
As a concept, it was moving in the right direction, but the imagery was a standard stock which I work to avoid.
Adam Schnitzer, our Marketing and Sales Director, emphasized creating abstractions of famine. I had an epiphany realizing that instead of locusts being the addition, they should be removed: in famine when there's no food, everything is being taken away.
David’s most unique works are his original collages. On his website, I researched his cut-paper collages. I realized it would be interesting if we harnessed this concept of removal for starvation and lack of life through white space. I shared his previous designs back with him, explaining this idea.
David returned to us with this solution collaging the chaos and horror of paper locusts.
This was closer but still too complicated – I wanted the design to focus on the words and the locusts eating them. Through another round or two, we moved to the final cover, which is only green and white, and utilizes one type family. When we produce the final art files and wrap the jacket, we will have more white appearing. The reader will experience mastication around the edges.
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