Dante’s Indiana (Biblioasis Books) is a sequel to Randy Boyagoda’s first novel Original Prin. The second book is described by the publisher as “an extraordinary journey through the divine comedies and tragedies of our time.”

‘Comedy and tragedy’ is also an apt way to describe the surprise in finding out that a book design now has a sequel. There is absolutely a different approach taken in designing a book cover if it’s known that it will become a series vs. doing so after the fact. That said, it’s also an engaging design challenge figuring out just how to extend the design language of a previously published book to a new one!

When art director Jessica Albert at ECW Press sends assignments my way, she always includes a selection of comparable titles with the design brief. For Cordelia Strube’s darkly comic novel, set in a diner-style chain restaurant, many of the comps had a quirky quality, and almost all had big, bold, and colourful type. Along with the comps, there was also an adorably off kilter photo included, with the note:

Andrew Wilmot’s The Death Scene Artist (Woksak & Wynn) is a literary horror novel that recounts a romance between the dying M_____, a bit player film and television extra, and the world’s greatest living ‘redshirt’, who has died on screen nearly 800 times. There’s a lot of symbolism that came to mind right away in reading the book. Movies, death, performance, scripts, masks, red…

"Reading the manuscript, I was struck by just how empty Guy seemed, and that’s what I wanted to evoke on the cover: an empty suit…the term ‘stuffed shirt’ also came to mind. A simple suit on a hanger wouldn’t work, though: there needed to be an indication of something ‘missing'. By removing the head, and more importantly the face, from the figure, Guy’s humanity has been replaced by his name. A name that’s synonymous with the generic. He’s no longer a man, he’s a symbol."