Stephanie Ross on Creating a Stunningly Simplistic Cover for Love
Stephanie Ross is a book cover designer based in New York City. Here she talks us through her process for designing the superbly simple cover for Love.
Love is a prose-poem account of a young woman, Libby, as she navigates life as a sex worker in Israel. The author shows us how easily lines can be crossed, how one can convince themselves that violence is intimacy, and objectification is real love.
I was able to read the manuscript in one sitting. It managed to be captivating and uncomfortable at the same time, and its short length allowed me to quickly become absorbed in Libby’s life. After reading, I decided to depict the lives of women under the gaze of men through subtly provocative images.
The author expressed interest in using a Marilyn Minter photograph, which served as a great jumping off point. Her work is visually seductive, yet unpleasantly visceral.
I started looking for more work that had the same sense of simultaneous beauty and discomfort. I wanted to highlight this contrast by using images that looked elegant and seductive, with an unsettling, almost disgusting undertone. I used type that was simple and direct, to contrast with the suggestive quality of the images.
There is an extensive amount of work out in the world that deals with this theme, and I wanted to create something myself in the same vein that would convey the concept in a more direct, simple way. I tried drawing different parts of a woman’s body separately to form each letter in the title of the novel, and to also highlight the constant objectification of women under the male gaze.
Art: Stephanie Ross
I also wondered how I could subvert something we commonly associate with love and affection, a lipstick kiss. Instead of a kiss, I wanted to show a grimace or frown. I used a lot of lipstick and tried several sneering expressions as I tried to get the perfect impression on a sheet of paper.
I made the title and author name as large as I could in a stark black, to contrast with the almost delicate lips that stand alone in the top half of the cover.
Final cover
Out of all the options shown, this cover conveyed the concept in the most simple, pared down way, and in the end, this is the cover everyone in-house and the author liked the best.
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.