The Wilful Eye / The Wicked Wood: An interview with designer Zoe Sadokierski

The Wilful Eye and The Wicked Wood are the first and second volumes of a stunning short-story collection that sees some of the world’s best-loved writers take on some of the world’s best-known fairy tales. As one reviewer quipped, ‘Fairy tales never die - they just get facelifts’.

The creation of jacket images for the two volumes - published some six months apart - came with a slightly different set of challenges to the usual process of cover design. We asked Zoe Sadokierski to tell us about it.

The final full cover for The Wilful Eye:



Tell us about the brief; where did the idea of designing the two volumes together come from?
I was briefed to design the two covers as a set – the Tower Anthologies. The audience was described as: “16+, crossover/adult, fantasy readers, lovers of magical realism, literary fiction.” The books are anthologies of fairy tales that are quite dark and many are told from a female perspective.

Who briefed you - publisher, editor, both?
Both initially, then I worked closely with the editor. I enjoy working with the A&U Melbourne team because everyone is enthusiastic and involved the whole way through, without intruding on my creative process.

The final full cover for The Wicked Wood:



Did they have a clear vision of what they wanted or was it more collaborative and evolved over the course of the design process?
The initial direction was clear in terms of what kind of mood needed to be communicated, but initially we were going to use another illustrator whose work was much more linear in style. It was a collaborative process to get to the rich, layered illustrations these covers ended up with. Designers call this the ‘rebriefing’ process; over the course of a project, you need to keep re-looking at the brief and reassessing how to keep all parties (publishing, marketing, sales, the authors) happy. Sometimes this means stopping, reflecting, and changing tack.

Process pic no.1:



Where did you start (ie picture research, colour palette, mood board…?)
I always start by going to the book store. It’s important to see what ‘friends’ your covers are going to be hanging out with on the shelf. You want a cover to belong to the genre but also to stand out from the other books there. Then I do some image research and develop an archive of inspiration – colours, images, ideas. I start sketching ideas in a notebook. I don’t start on the computer until I know what I want to create.

Process pic no.2:



What sort of constraints if any were there? (budget? intended audience? format? other?)
Audience, genre and budget are always constraints in the commercial publishing world, and an important part of the brief to consider from the start. The format was pitched by the publisher/editor (taller and thinner than a regular format to reflect the idea of the ‘tower’ books) – that was a constraint I liked. We ended up using a 5th colour PMS (the gold) as an embellishment, because it ‘lifted’ the darkness of the illustration.

Walk us through your process: where did you start, and how was the cover refined over the course of the process?
I wanted an image that travelled across both covers, connecting them without having to be one ‘piece’. The idea of the two woman with their hands touching was inspired by the idea of looking through a mirror, into another world. Each women touches the reflection of the other’s world. The titles of the books, which actually came quite late in the process (I imagine it’s very difficult to name an anthology of such unique stories), helped me with the tone of each illustration.

Zoe also worked on the books’ internal design:



Can you give us some technical specs? Also, what was the hardest part about this design job? What was the easiest/most fun?
The most fun part is always reading the stories and getting excited about the flock of different ideas that come at me as I read. The typefaces are Packard Antique, which has a slightly distressed look without being too much of a novelty font, and Perpetua – which is also the typeface I designed the internals with. Perpetua has a beautiful set of italics that are readable but still distinct and unique. I created the images from scratch, using a ridiculous number of layers in Photoshop. I knew what I wanted before I started making the illustration in Photoshop, but I always allow happy accidents or unexpected outcomes to lead me as I’m making the image. I’m mostly self-taught with Photoshop, so much of my process is fumbling around trying things out and trusting my ‘eye’ when something works.



Some of Zoe’s other recently published work

A Life in Frocks - Kelly Doust (for which Zoe won Best Designed Non-Fiction Book at the APA Book Design Awards 2011)









See more of Zoe’s work at her online folio