Publications
Partners
The designer of Nigerian literary sensation Chibundu Onuzo’s next novel tells Garreth van Niekerk that he wanted to make a book cover that’s like a mini poster
Since releasing her first book, The Spider King’s Daughter, aged all of 21, Nigerian writer Chibundu Onuzo has held the literary world in the palm of her hands. It’s no wonder then that her surprise announcement last week confirming the January 2017 release of Welcome to Lagos – her second title with publishing giant Faber & Faber – had the literati’s ears pricked up.
Onuzo posted the first image of Welcome to Lagos’ cover art on Instagram, a colourful street scene of Nigeria’s unofficial capital city. It created quite a stir.
I spoke the to the book cover’s illustrator Bill Bragg this week, between his day job on The
Guardian’s opinion section, about the spectacular imagery he dreamt up.
He worked closely with the text to realise the design, he says. “The novel centres on a group of disparate characters all travelling to Lagos for different reasons. The fantastic descriptions of Lagos, the atmosphere, the title, and the interconnecting of different lives and paths central to the story suggested a busy street scene. I tried a view from street level, but the bird’s-eye view worked best as you can see more of the scene and it also allowed me to integrate the lettering in a more pleasing way.”
In what publishers call the “dark arts of book marketing”, what does Bragg think makes a good book cover? “I like to think of a book cover as a mini poster. Firstly, it needs to call you over from across the room and, once there, give you the information you need. I’m more of an illustrator than a designer, so I also want the drawing to be engaging, to tell a story in its own right, to draw the viewer into the world of the story.”
His advice for the emerging book designer? “I like very much Herman Melville’s advice about writing: ‘It’s better to attempt originality and fail than to succeed in imitation.’ It’s good advice in the arts in general. Hard to do, but worth trying.”
