Anna Morrison on Designing The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart
Anna Morrison is a UK-based freelance art director, designer and sometime illustrator. She works mainly in publishing, designing book covers for a variety of clients in the UK and internationally. Here she takes us through her process for creating the cover of The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart.
I was thrilled when the lovely Loulou Clarke from Orion got in touch with me to see if I was interested in designing The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart by Margarita Montimore. Even before knowing anything the about the book it was a huge yes from me; that title was so intriguing, and it turned out to be one of those gloriously rare experiences where one of my first ideas was approved straight off the bat.
The story begins in Brooklyn in 1982 when Oona is celebrating New Year's Eve, however as soon as the clock strikes twelve everything changes; she finds herself as a 51 year old woman, 33 years older than she was before midnight. As the story progresses, we see Oona jump into different years of her own life and having to come to terms with her own ever-changing situation and learning to accept her fate
The brief was fairly open to my interpretation, but it did say an illustrative route was the preferred way to go (my favourite route). I definitely wanted to evoke Oona's quirkiness through the cover, playing about with the letters in the title I was drawn to those two OO’s in her name and wondered if I could use them to signify the time travel element…The two OO’s led me to creating a simple image of an ageless face of Oona which incorporated the title as Oona’s eyes and using one of the O’s as a clockface…it all just came together! I love integrating type with an image, it just feels so neat. Apologies, it was a very simple process …. basically, a dream book to work on where the cover designs itself!
Final cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.