Chin-Yee Lai on Designing Worked Over
Chin-Yee Lai is a book designer and the Creative Director at Basic Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, and has run Chin-Yee Lai Design since 2001. Here she talks us through her process for designing Worked Over.
Worked Over by Jamie K. McCallum is a non-fiction book about the history and current state of work and employment in America. The book starts with two powerful stories: a woman dying from a combination of carbon monoxide and fumes from an overturned gas container while sleeping in her car between shifts and a Caviar delivery worker killed by a car while biking on a rainy night. These two stories resounded in me, especially the first one. I wanted the cover to capture the genuine exhaustion and dire situation that many Americans face. I felt that a photograph would portray the stark reality more accurately than an illustration could, so I set out to find an appropriate image.
I made sure to incorporate a couple of themes into the cover: the nighttime and the loneliness. Working long hours generally requires people to work late at night when there is no light and not many people are still up and about. The first story mentioned above sparked an idea—I could use an image of one car in an empty parking lot taking during the night. A person who works late would probably be one of the last to leave the workplace. At first, I was skeptical of the image I had chosen. Although it fulfilled my requirements, the image seemed not as empty as I wanted.
Original image
To rectify both faults, I extended the sky portion of the image at the top. Now that the night sky occupied more of the image, it seemed darker and emptier. Since the image was so compelling, I felt that the text should be simple—I didn’t want the text to take away from the image. I position the title above the lamppost, which was the focal point of the image. It draws your eyes to the title first, then subtitle. I placed the author’s name on the bottom left corner—it’s crucial to maintain a balance.
Ultimately, the final cover went through the approval process smoothly. Worked Over was released in September 2020.
Final cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.