Aurora Parlegreco on Designing Jeff VanderMeer's A Peculiar Peril
Aurora Parlagreco is a Senior Designer at Macmillan Children’s whose work has been featured in the New York Book Show. Here she talks Spine through her process for creating A Peculiar Peril.
An inherited mansion full of curiosities. A talking marmot. Alternate history, magic, humor. These were some of the early descriptions I was given about A Peculiar Peril, author Jeff VanderMeer’s first young adult novel. As in Jeff’s adult books, he builds a world that is strange and fantastic, and I was so excited to have the opportunity to design the cover for this new adventure.
Along with a jacket brief and the manuscript, I was given a series of illustrations by Jeremy Zerfoss that would be included throughout the book. These were helpful in giving me an early sense of tone, as well as pushing me to create a cover that matched the energy and quirkiness of the interior art.
I was immediately inspired by all of the details and imagery in the story. Sometimes there are a few images that stand out as having potential for a cover – in this case, I had so many wonderful creatures, characters, and objects to pull from!
I was particularly intrigued by the mansion that main character Jonathan Lambshead inherits from his grandfather. In an early email from editor Wes Adams, he described it as “an overload of the senses.” I wanted our cover to have this same feeling – rich in imagery, with hidden details that emerge the longer you look at it.
After exploring a range of ideas (one of my early comps was a portrait of a marmot in an antique frame, hanging on a wallpapered wall as if from one of the estate’s many rooms) we decided to focus on the book’s title, with plants, creatures, and objects from the story weaving into and holding the type. This concept was also a nice nod to Annihilation. While aimed at a young adult audience, we wanted Peril to appeal to the author’s adult readers as well.
I hired artist Lindsey Carr to illustrate the cover. Lindsey’s work is beautiful and mysterious, with bold colors and a hint of surrealism. I provided a list of imagery to pull from and mocked up some type for her to work off of, which I ended up using and refining in the final design. One of my favorite parts of her sketches were the architectural elements she included. These were a nice balance to the vines and flowers on the cover, as well as a nod to the mansion at the center of the story.
While we loved the organic feel of these early sketches, we wanted to add a second layer of information to the cover. We also wanted to represent the main character in some way, particularly because we were including a subtitle on the cover at that time (The Misadventure of Jonathan Lambshead). We decided to build off of Lindsey’s architectural details and refine the shape of the illustration to create a boy’s profile. I added some dimension to the title type and played around with what letterforms were obscured to make sure the title felt integrated but legible. In the end, we were able to create a cover that is striking both as a whole and in the details.
In addition to the cover, we were able to add some fun elements to the interior, playing on the idea of hidden worlds. One example of this is the title page, which includes a hard-to-spot “alternate” title.
The final book has a matte finish and a spine large enough that it felt like designing a second cover! I hope readers have as much fun discovering the secrets of this book as I had in designing it.
Final cover
Full cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.