Josh Durham on Designing Throat by Ellen Van Neerven
Josh Durham is a multi award-winning designer who worked in the magazine industry before setting up his company Design by Committee in sunny Australia. Here he talks us through his process for creating the vibrant cover for Throat.
The author Ellen Van Neerven describes their poetry collection Throat as ‘a fierce cry: a collection of poems about whiteness, climate change, extinctions; about types of shame lodged squarely in the throat; about culpability and protection.’
While briefing me, the publisher passed on this note from Ellen regarding the cover: ‘... interestingly I’ve been thinking of an image of a face on the cover. Never thought I’d go there but... Just how relevant it might be to have a representation of a queer First Nations person. So even happy for it to be a representation of my face!?! if necessary.’
Now folks that know me will know I am no Lucien Freud, no Vermeer, Valeszquez or Frida Kahlo. I’m more a designer who draws a bit and is better with a garden hoe than a paintbrush. I’m one of those people in life drawing class who draws headless bodies, somehow running out of time to attempt a rendering of the face. Eek! I scurried away to read the manuscript and hopefully pull something together that didn’t require a head on it. Well at least ELLEN’s strong, gorgeous head.
Their writing was rich with possibilities. The ‘black throated finch’ appeared in an early poem about coal mines and climate change and it even has ‘throat’ in its name! Neat! Maybe an animal? I often worry that my portfolio has too many animals in it. They can be so emotional and engaging I sometimes find them hard to resist. Had I done too many animal covers in 2019? Was it too close to Portlandia’s ‘Put a bird on it’ sketch?! Maybe. I mocked up a couple of illustrated roughs with a simple abstracted finch (focusing the crop on its black throat) and sent them through to the publisher to get the ball rolling.
They were knocked back straight away. I read the full manuscript the following night and knew where I had gone wrong - this was personal, raw emotionally charged writing of power, ugliness, and grace, and these were very static, subdued covers that did not speak to the author and their voice at all. Note to designers: READ! It also helped me understand why the author had suggested a portrait of some sort - this was them, uncompromised on every page.
So I dived in head first (no pun intended). I searched the internet for recent shots of the author and printed them out in black and white. I used the reference material to do some pencil tracings up against the window which I photographed with my iPhone and emailed to myself to drag into Photoshop and colorise. These first attempts were pretty orthodox (and ordinary) but gave me a launching pad from which to experiment.
I started thinking about the notion of portraiture as a representation of the subject - not necessarily a photographic rendering that my basic drafting skills would struggle to achieve - a short cut to something graphically interesting and with a bit of luck still recognisably human. Miro, Klee and others that mastered the abstract portrait (though to be fair they were also not short on traditional skill and way beyond our image budget, even if they were still alive. Besides, the author had said ‘even happy for it to be a ‘representation’ of my face’ in their original directive. In the book Critical Terms for Literary Study, 2nd ed. W. J. T. Mitchell suggests that in art “representation is an extremely elastic notion, which extends all the way from a stone representing a man to a novel representing the day in the life of several Dubliners”. By that definition I was off the hook! If Klee was Jon Bohnam, I was a 5 year-old Meg White banging on cardboard boxes with a deadline bearing down on me.
Ellen’s cultural makeup and background is rich and complex. They are a queer first nations person born of Dutch and Aboriginal parents in Meanjin. I imagine Ellen sees themselves as all these things and more and I wanted to represent this diversity in the portrait. But how the hell to do it? Firstly I shifted the colour palette. I then started deconstructing the portrait breaking it into coloured sections and shifting the features until it became somewhat more abstract and representational (see what I did there?!) Half their hair was green, half their hair was blue and so on.
I felt reasonably confident about with these so I added some type and sent them through for discussion with the publisher. It was interesting adding typography as suddenly there are extra elements that need to work with the portrait - it becomes anchored as a book cover as opposed to a picture floating in its own importance. There was some general enthusiasm for the approach but a sense that perhaps I had been pushed too far into arty territory. Also I got slapped around the head for not following the typographic look from the authors previous book as requested in the brief.
I like being in the position of being reined in - this is where the basic creative elements are retained but the commercial concerns are applied - always a good time to pause and reflect on where things are and how to bring it home relatively intact. The cream background rough above had the head cropped top and bottom with the title where the actual throat should be. This struck me as a handy way to knit the title into the graphic. And a great visual metaphor to boot.
I dropped this composition onto a bright pink background, removed the floating elements from the cream version and worked on refining the colour palette. We sent thus cover through to Ellen and they were rapt. I went into full abstract mode on the back cover as we chopped the portrait into colour blocks that bled over the spine and trim on the back cover.
Final cover
I love this book as much as I love Comfort Food, Ellen Van Neervan’s first collection. I must profess to some anxiety and personal reflection around being a white Australian male tasked (and paid) to visually interpret the words and feelings of a queer first nations person. That that is possible at all is perhaps a reflection of my privilege. I urge you to seek out all of Australia’s First Nations writers and artists - their works are a gift - listen to their stories and share in their history, pain and joy.
#Always Was, Always Will Be #blacklivesmatter
Full cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.