Allison Saltzman Creates an Exceptional Design for Nothing to See Here
Allison Saltzman is the Senior Art Director at Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins. Here she tells us her process for creating an exceptional cover for Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here.
Kevin Wilson is one of my favorite Ecco authors. I’d read his books even if I didn’t have to; his stories of unconventional family life are immersive and poignant, but also slightly cock-eyed and very funny. And they are always thought-provoking for their wider implications.
In his latest novel, Nothing to See Here, two old friends (boarding school roommates) reconnect when one is between jobs and the other needs a nanny for her new stepchildren. The catch is that if these kids get too agitated—whether from excitement or unhappiness—they burst into flames. They themselves are not harmed, but they do risk burning everything and everyone around them. That’s the literal danger, but there’s also a figurative one as well: their father has been nominated to be Secretary of State, and offspring who spontaneously combust would ruin his chances, if not his entire career. So the nanny’s job is to keep the kids calm and seemingly normal. What could possibly go wrong?
For the cover, I thought, “I can NOT show kids on fire.” So my first covers had photographs of inanimate objects (toast, leaves) burned or suggestive of burning.
They were rejected—rightly—for being oblique and sterile. Next, I tried to find images that got at kids’ emotional extremes feeling like conflagrations. I found two wonderful illustrations by Matheus Lopes: one I interpreted as being a boy leaving a trail of destruction, the other shows a flailing, running girl whose head is a roaring lion.
These too were rejected, for not holding enough mainstream appeal...although I liked them very much.
Then I abandoned art and tried clean graphics. Rather than emphasizing fire, I depicted the cover-up, with a fire extinguisher dousing flames. But in doing so, I fell into the trap of illustrating the title, and this version was rejected too—rightly again—for not conveying the book’s charms.
And then finally, in the wilds of Pinterest, I came across what I thought was a piece of weird ephemera—it looked like an old postcard or matchbook label—of a boy with his pants on fire. But it turned out to have been created by contemporary artist Christian Northeast, with whom I’d worked in the past. Christian agreed to license the art to us, kindly made a few alterations, and then I had my perfect cover.
My type choice throughout was something simple and bold; deadpan, to match the title. (It’s Payson, which I love for being a rougher, warmer version of Futura.)
Final cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.