Michel Vrana on Designing Dante's Indiana
Michel Vrana is a graphic designer who ran his own boutique studio for ten years before deciding to go freelance in 2009 to concentrate on his passion: creating book covers. Here he talks us through his process for designing Dante’s Indiana.
Dante’s Indiana (Biblioasis Books) is a sequel to Randy Boyagoda’s first novel Original Prin. The second book is described by the publisher as “an extraordinary journey through the divine comedies and tragedies of our time.”
‘Comedy and tragedy’ is also an apt way to describe the surprise in finding out that a book design now has a sequel. There is absolutely a different approach taken in designing a book cover if it’s known that it will become a series vs. doing so after the fact. That said, it’s also an engaging design challenge figuring out just how to extend the design language of a previously published book to a new one!
Thankfully, the design for Original Prin feels like it was created with a sequel in mind, almost prescient in its conception! (Thanks, past me.) For the purpose of creating the next book in a series, identifying the components of the original design was a logical first step. Here’s what I found:
a limited colour palette (red, yellow, black, white)
clean retro title font in two colours (Cabernet, in black and red)
a large background illustrative element (the explosion)
a foreground element that interacts with the type (the black motion lines)
Thus the design process became about finding new elements to highlight the story of Dante’s Indiana. Central to the new book is a Dante’s Inferno theme park (in Indiana, of course!), and that provided lots of strong iconic imagery. I was definitely thankful that the book has another relatively short two word title, helping the new design to immediately mirror that of the first one.
Immediately, the idea of fire sprang to mind, both because of ‘Inferno’ but also to link to the explosion on the first book. Author Randy Boyagoda also wanted to see at least one option with a rollercoaster (with a Ferris wheel on the back should the rollercoaster work out).
The new elements became:
a limited colour palette (blue, orange, red, black, white)
clean retro font in two colours (Cabernet, in black and white)
a large background illustrative element (the fire)
a foreground element that interacts with the type (ticket or rollercoaster)
The colour palette somewhat matches that of Original Prin, with the addition of blue to incorporate the ‘Paradiso’ (paradise, heaven) aspect of the theme park. The blue also carries over to the back cover with Paradiso’s ferris wheel, the counterpoint to the draconian roller coaster on the front.
Final cover
While I liked the design using the ticket for the way it echoed the centered stripped down feel of Original Prin, as well as its symbolism as ‘admission’ to Paradise or Inferno, the roller coaster was the hands down winner. With its dynamic presence, weaving in and out of the title, it clearly illustrated ‘theme park’ in a much more immediate fashion.
Full cover
Full cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.