Freelance February: Will Staehle on Designing Scorched Grace
Will Staehle is the designer and illustrator behind Unusual Co. which focuses on commercial design and original content creation. Here he talks to us about his process for designing the gorgeous cover for Scorched Earth.
While I’ve been designing covers for quite a few years now, this project held a handful of firsts for me. This was my first job for Zando Projects, as well as my first cover for Art Director Evan Gaffney - whose work I’ve always enjoyed, but we'd never worked together before.
As I made my way through the wonderful modern noir read of Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy (the debut novel from Gillian Flynn Books) I was immediately drawn in by the character of Sister Holiday. Sister Holiday is a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed nun who ends up playing amateur sleuth when Saint Sebastian’s School becomes the target of a shocking arson attack.
1. The novel feels like it resides in a slew of dark alleyways, so I tried doing a seedy neon street sign direction. I liked the idea of playing with the concept of a set of praying hands doubling as a pose to block the wind as Sister Holiday lights up a cigarette. I was really happy with this cover, but it didn’t quite hit.
2. Sister Holiday has a bit of a punk rock history, so I tried to go in a punk flyer direction. This design pulled together an assortment of lettering and cut paper elements as well as some doodles that acted as a general cover framework.
3. Lastly, I definitely wanted to design one cover in a stained-glass-esque style. I began drawing the figure in Illustrator and brought the file into Photoshop where I added some additional effects to give it dimension, and some subtle glow.
This cover seemed to be an immediate hit with the team at Zando, and it was approved with some minor back and forth on the figure illustration and the clothing details. I was thrilled that they loved it, but as I re-opened the file to make the edits, I had a huge face-palm moment…
Apparently, at some point in the design process, I had scaled the art small enough that I no longer had any extra bleed for the cover art…. so, after 30 mins of weeping, I began to redraw and extend each of the irregular stained glass frames at the edges of the cover. Despite the momentary set-back, I was quite thrilled with how the cover turned out, and I hope that everyone enjoys Margot’s fantastic novel, Scorched Grace.
Final cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.