BEHIND THE COVER: The Teeth of a Slow Machine
Andrew Roff's debut short-story collection, The Teeth of a Slow Machine, is a daring, irreverent exploration of the conundrums of contemporary life, and what it means to be a human. In this guest post, Andrew takes us through the design process for the cover of his collection.
Many thanks to the covers' designer, Duncan Blachford of Typography Studio, who has generously allowed us to reproduce some of his early cover concepts. Read on to see the stories behind the concepts, and to see the winning design.
Like many aspiring writers, I couldn’t help daydreaming about the cover of my first book. Would it be bright? Ominous? Scandalous? Futuristic and fantastical, featuring a rocket ship or a robot like the golden-age sci-fi novels I grew up on? Or something more abstract? Something classy?
When I learned that Wakefield Press had offered to publish my first short story collection, I danced around the kitchen; released a cage full of doves; kissed a baby. Then came more writing, and editing, and re-writes, and proof-reading. And it was only towards the end of that process that work on a cover began.
I had been warned by other writers: don’t expect to have much input. The publisher invests in the book, and so the publisher makes the final call on which cover they believe will best drive sales. Fair enough! Still, I fretted. I’d laboured for years on these stories. What if, when they took physical form, I couldn’t stand how they’d been dressed up?
I needn’t have worried. My editor at Wakefield, Jo Case (who has recently moved on to a role as Deputy Editor of the new Books & Ideas section at The Conversation) wanted my book to succeed, too, and more importantly, for it to be an object we could both be proud of. In emails, I tried not to nag. Any thoughts yet about the cover? Or: How is the cover coming along? Or, just in my own head: Where is the @#$%ing cover already?
Jo asked me for some general thoughts on what kind of cover I might like. I think she was expecting a couple of sentences. Naturally I replied with an essay, citing a host of other book covers that I admired, including these:
The gist of the essay was, ‘I would like the cover to reflect the kind of book this will be: experimental, quirky, fresh from a new writer, conceptual. Not: stuffy, grounded, conservative, safe.’
It’s sometimes said that a lawyer who represents themselves has a fool for a client. A writer who tries to design their own cover is surely running a similar risk. Because I am a fool, and couldn’t help myself, I started to play around with some rough visual concepts. Not because I wanted to dictate what the content of the cover should be – just to try and get clearer in my own mind why I liked the example covers I’d found.
Here is what I came up with:
There is a reason why authors should not try and design their own covers! As you can also see, we were trying out a few alternate titles for the collection around this time. While I didn’t think any of these concepts were right, the process did help to clarify, in my own mind, a mood and aesthetic I wanted the cover to have, and some visual cues/elements that might facilitate that.
Diplomatically setting aside my attempts at graphic design, Wakefield Press engaged Duncan Blachford at Typography Studio to come up with some real concepts. I wasn’t familiar with Duncan’s work before this, but if you jump on Typography Studio’s website, you will quickly see that he is not mucking around.
Importantly, and generously, Duncan took time to read the stories in my collection. Not all designers have the time or the inclination to do this. Which is fine, but as soon as I saw the four phenomenal concepts that Duncan came up with, it was clear to me that he’d really engaged with my writing. I’m thrilled that with Duncan’s permission, I can share these with you now, because they each speak to the book, and they are each magnificent.
Concept One:
This is so striking! On a first look, this stood out to me as possibly my favourite. I love the image of the train tracks, which picks up on multiple stories/scenes from the collection. The way Duncan has colourised the image suggests, to me, disorder in the natural world (the falcon cannot hear the falconer, etc etc), in tension with the ordered parallel iron tracks. The railway sleepers work in with the ‘teeth’ and ‘machine’ of the title, and overall, there is a vague sense of menace, which pleases me.
Talking it over, one potential reservation was the size and positioning of the type, which perhaps evoked an important upmarket fiction novel. My book is not important, I think, but hopefully it is interesting – so perhaps, of the four designs, this was not the most representative option for the book I’d written.
Concept Two:
The way that Duncan has rendered this is mesmerising. The muddled, zig-zagged background plays so well with the typeface of the text. I have a soft spot for this one, because it’s based on a line from a story in the collection that’s close to my heart, in which the narrator is staring at ‘one particular painting: abstract curls of green and blue that suggested an estuary.’ Of course, customers in a book store, looking at my book for the first time, won’t have that context, so the cover also needs to stand on its own merits, which I think this does.
Concept Three:
My initial notes about this concept: ‘The more I look at it, the more I love it … the nod to surrealism/dadaism suits the stories perfectly … there’s the feather, and then those spirals (what are they?) suggesting teeth, and clockwork and therefore also time, and time passing. And the feather itself is ambiguous, it could be a fang, or a tusk, and the way it interplays with the text is bold … I just think it’s so representative of the collection.’
Concept Four:
I love this one, too, which is a nod to my story ‘Camelopard’ which appears in the collection. It’s mysterious, grainy, candid, almost brooding, and suggests a kind of biological process/machine. Yes, yes, yes.
All together, we had four amazing concepts to choose from. By email I conferred with Jo as well as my agent, the astute former bookseller, Martin Shaw. It was not an easy decision, but a winner had to be chosen:
Ultimately, we all agreed that this was the most visually striking option. It’s complex, and ambiguous, but – thanks to the colourful gradient washing across the type – not pretentious. I reckon people will give this a second look in a bookshop. Hopefully they will linger, flip it over, and read all of the endorsements on the back!
The background for this cover is a photo entitled ‘The Feather’ by surrealist visual artist Man Ray. I love this connection, reaching back in time to the 1920s, to another artist trying to push the boundaries of his chosen medium.
Every time I look at this cover – and I have looked at it a lot – I see something new that catches my eye. It is never boring, and that’s why I love it.
I am very grateful to Duncan, Jo, and Wakefield Press for this cover, which has made me a proud and happy first-time author. And if you also like the cover, then just wait until you read the book!