Adult Fiction Cover Award
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
‘Evocative, entertaining, sexy and funny; but then Murakami is one of the best writers around’ Time Out
When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire – to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marched into his life and he had to choose between the future and the past.
‘Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami’s writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility’ Guardian
‘This book is undeniably hip, full of student uprisings, free love, booze and 1960s’ pop, it’s also genuinely emotionally engaging, and describes the highs of adolescence as well as the lows’ Independent on Sunday
‘A heart-stoppingly moving story... Murakami is, without a doubt, one of the world’s finest novelists’ Herald
The cover used in the briefing notes was created in 2012 by Suzanne Dean, Creative Director at VINTAGE and illustrator and designer Noma Bar.
The Brief
Haruki Murakami’s books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally. His writing is vivid, dazzling, experimental and imaginative and your cover design should reflect this.
Try to get your hands on a copy of the book in order to get a sense of the writing, this will only help to inspire your design.
The story is well known both in celluloid and print so it is essential to come at it from a fresh angle. It should appeal to a contemporary, enquiring and literary readership.
Try to design a new cover for a new generation of readers, avoiding the obvious clichés. Originality is key.
Your cover design needs to include all the cover copy as supplied and be designed to the specified design template (B format, 198mm high x 129mm wide, spine 27 mm wide). Please refer to the Submissions Details page for full details of the spec and how to submit your entry.
Copyright must be cleared for all images used in your cover design and you must include a credit line on the back cover of your design for any third party images used. For example: ‘Cover photograph by Joe Bloggs’.
What the judges are looking for:
We are looking for a striking cover design that is well executed, has an imaginative concept and clearly places the book for its market. While all elements of the cover (front, back and spine) need to work together, remember that the front cover has to be able to work on its own, and to be eye-catching within a crowded bookshop setting as well as on screen at a reduced size for digital retailers.
The winning design will need to:
- have an imaginative concept
- be an original interpretation of the brief
- be competently executed with strong use of typography
- appeal to the broadest possible audience for the book
- show a good understanding of the marketplace
- have a point of difference from other books that it will be competing against in the market
- be able to sit on the shelves of a supermarket or ebook store as easily as it sits on those of more traditional bookshops
"I think as an illustrator, I often feel stuck in this middle ground between creating work that is very representational or figurative, versus work that is more graphic and design-led, and I felt like this project has really helped me work out how to navigate and combine both of those approaches."
- Harry Woodgate, winner of the Penguin Adult Non-Fiction Cover Award 2018
The Prizes
1st Prize
The winner of each category will be invited to spend four weeks in the Penguin Random House Design Studios on a work placement*, working on live briefs. The work placement will be paid at the current London Living Wage rate (subject to any applicable taxation) and the winner will also receive a cash prize of £1,000.
*Subject to agreeing terms in advance. Entrants must be eligible to work in the UK.
2nd Prize
The winner of the 2nd Prize will receive a £500 cash prize.
3rd Prize
The winner of the 3rd Prize will receive a £250 cash prize.
All the shortlisted entrants will be invited to an award ceremony where the winners will be announced, and at which an exhibition of all the shortlisted designs will be on display.
Judges
Suzanne Dean – Art Director, Vintage
Suzanne graduated from Kingston University, where she studied Graphic Design. Her first job was at The Greenhouse, designing food packaging and brochures. A year later she was asked if she might be interested in publishing. She joined Penguin Books as a Senior Designer, working for Hamish Hamilton. Three years later she joined Macmillan, to work on the Picador list. Five years later she joined Random House as Art Director for Vintage Books, whose many imprints include Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Windus and Harvill Secker. Here she established the design for the Vintage Classics list. She has worked on a wide range of cover designs for authors such as Mark Haddon, Haruki Murakami, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Yuval Noah Harari, Richard Flanagan and Rachel Kushner.
I found an interview with Suzanne Dean about her idea of good cover design. Dean was responsible for the Vintage logo update and some of her cover design work has been for Haruki Murakami - author of Norwegian Woods. She suggests that it is important to break your own rues, but in a thought out way just as she did by adding colour to Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki. She says that someone will be convinced to buy a physical book rather than an online one if you make it beautiful and desirable collectable objects.
A cover that hints at the contents receives better reception than one which spells out too heavily. A key theme that seems to be present in the way that Dean designs is the idea of keeping something relevant, but also intricately suiting their contents, not just to our times but to all times. You must experiment, and engage with all forms of media.
Richard Ogle – Art Director, Transworld
Richard graduated from the University of Central Lancashire with a Graphic Design degree. He was drawn into publishing through book cover design agency The Senate and has never looked back. He became Art Director at Transworld Publishing, within Penguin Random House, in 2015. He was previously Art Director at Cornerstone, also in the PRH Group, for thirteen years. He has also worked at Pan Macmillan as Associate Art Director, and Headline Books as a Senior Designer
Over the years he has worked on a range of cover designs for books, in all genres, including novels by John Grisham, Kate Atkinson, James Herbert, Paula Hawkins, James Patterson, Shari Lapena, Wilbur Smith, P.G. Wodehouse, Lisa Jewell, Sophie Kinsella and Douglas Coupland, plus autobiographies by Peter Kay, Tony Blair, David Jason, Rod Stewart, Steve Coogan and John Cleese.
Redesigning existing titles is something that is an important part of his role as an Art Director. He says that each redesign has its own challenges and requirements but, as a designer, the main thing that can be offered is the interpretation of a book. The design must distill your own vision rather than simply taking briefs at face value and supplying exactly what is expected from you.
The cover designs for Anna quindlen were all based on the use of one symbolic object that illustrates the narrative of the book. The designs are made up of a mixture of commissioned photography, stock imagery, CGI/Photoshop and also commissioned calligraphy.
Jason Smith – Art Director, Cornerstone
After graduating from the University of Derby with a BA Honours in Graphic Design, Jason moved to London to further his education at Central Saint Martins. He began his career working for a company which specialized in packaging for CDs and DVDs, combining his passion for music and film with design.
The move into publishing was a natural progression and he secured a job at Random House as designer, quickly followed by a more senior role. As Art Director of Cornerstone, Jason works on a list of successful authors including James Patterson, Helen Dunmore, Tony Parsons, Tim Peake and Katie Price to name a few.
‘I loved this design from the first time I saw it. Very abstract with a fantastic colour palette. A worthy winner’ Jason Smith – Art Director, Cornerstone
‘This design has come on leaps and bounds over the course of the different stages of the competition. I can really see this sitting on the bookshelves in store. A great design’ Jason Smith – Art Director, Cornerstone
‘Great use of type, the design really draws you in’ Jason Smith – Art Director, Cornerstone
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