Zaiah Antwi and Aarushi Menon on Redesigning a Classic for the Modern Library Torchbearers Series
Zaiah Antwi (formerly Zaiah Sampson) is a New York-based illustrated-book designer who works at Penguin Random House and Aarushi Menon is a New York-based book cover designer, currently working in the Random House cover art department. Here they detail their collaborative process for creating set design rules for The Modern Library Torchbearers Series and how it led to Aarushi’s redesign of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
The Modern Library Torchbearers Series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity and a spirit of resistance.
Modern Library AD Rachel Ake and the editorial team were interested in refreshing the existing Torchbearers series look by utilizing modern photography, while still having a system of design rules that any designer, from seasoned professional to a first-timer in publishing, could step in and put their own spin on. Rachel, along with Anna Kochman and Caroline Teagle Johnson, developed the system in the hopes that “by freeing up the brain from some of the design decisions, people could truly play and therefore experiment more.”
Zaiah:
In May of 2022, I began a 12-month apprenticeship in the Clarkson Potter and Random House art departments where I had the opportunity to explore various facets of book design. It was during that time that I met Rachel and worked with her on the Torchbearers series’ second-generation design.
We began the project by looking at the original design system: what worked, what could be enhanced and what the rules were. The original covers for the Torchbearers series featured a duochromatic color palette (black-and-white plus one color per publishing season), any kind of imagery and font styles in the Twentieth Century Gothic family. The use of a simple and specific set of rules allowed the design process to become accessible to as many designers as possible while still looking like part of a related series. Some designers explored playing with the T.C. font as a part of the graphic by giving it movement and various hierarchies that created drama and personality. Others experimented with texture and historical imagery to get various fascinating effects that spoke to, for example, the intense or mystical moods of the stories. Through clever explorations of mixed media, these conceptual designs stayed true to the heart of their stories while still being seen as part of a family.
Design credits (left to right): Nina Tsur, Caroline Teagle Johnson, Ella Laytham, Nina Tsur, Rachel Ake
After reflecting on the original design, I then studied popular design trends and successful existing book series, both classic and contemporary. I wanted to understand system-building and create an updated look for the Torchbearers that was also recognizable, captivating, and ultimately classic like the stories and women behind our books.
Then, it was time to start conceptualizing the new system. Rachel encouraged me to work on one of the backlist Torchbearers titles to give us time to explore a variety of directions. I chose Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, a classic gothic tale about the twisted fate of two families brought together by an obsessive and tormenting love that transcends generations and eventually social status.
Inspired by my research and reading, I started designing. My concepts used various styles of masked photography. I was captivated by the repeated theme in Wuthering Heights of suppressing one’s inner desires to satisfy acceptable societal perceptions. To convey this, I used moody/artistic photography placed in silhouetted frames, aiming to capture the feeling of being “caged in” by societal expectations. Additionally, I experimented with colorized photography to create a richer graphic experience.
Another exploration involved cutting up images in ways that felt more abstract and transferable across titles. I cut up photographs into shapes that varied in size and placement and kept the text in a clean, stacked lock-up. I also considered a more organized approach where the photography framed the text, giving it an airier moment than some of my other concepts.
The process of creating these photography-driven design systems brought our rebranding to life, especially with the addition of Aarushi to the team.
Aarushi:
When I joined the project, Rachel suggested I explore the system by using any upcoming Torchbearers title. I chose Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Anita Loos’ satirical 1925 novel following beautiful blonde showgirl Lorelei Lee as she searches for a prospective husband. While light-hearted in tone, it’s also been interpreted over the years as a distinctly feminist narrative about a woman shaping her future within the constraints of her era’s gender roles. Lorelei’s seemingly oblivious demeanor conceals a streetwise cleverness.
Although I mainly focused on exploring the system, I also had fun conceptualizing my individual designs. I wanted to capture the dichotomy between Lorelei’s apparent ditziness and internal intuitiveness while keeping the overall tone fun and fresh to meet the project brief.
For instance, I explored a series look that would split the page down the middle with complementary yet contrasting imagery on either side. In one design, I balanced a flashily decorated pink cake—representative of Lorelei’s outward beauty— against a masquerade mask, alluding to her hidden motives. In another composition, I featured a hand cupped around a disco ball, which I meant to read as Lorelei having the world in the palm of her hand, in a hedonistic sort of way.
Rachel and I refined my concepts, discarding irrelevant ideas and further considering each designs potential to be developed into a future series look. Some were easier to envision than others. For example, this hourglass system would have featured the same image in the upper and lower “bulbs”, but positioned differently within the space, representing the Torchbearers’ emphasis on changing perspectives and interpretations across eras. To test the systems more thoroughly, I designed some additional covers with a backlist title, Nella Larsen’s Quicksand.
At this stage, I saw Zaiah’s elegant design options. Together, we created a presentation deck and shared our ideas in a small meeting with the Modern Library editorial team. In true Torchbearers’ fashion, the team concluded that they actually loved the diversity of our various approaches. Ultimately, there was no need to fix what wasn’t broken; we would simply embrace the opportunity to include more modern photography and color in future Torchbearers publications. We would retain some stet rules (like using Twentieth Century Gothic for the type) but otherwise be free to play. With that, we called a successful end to the project.
Months later, Rachel emailed me to say that various schedules had aligned for us to actually move forward with one of my designs for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The option chosen featured a telephone with confetti exploding out of it, which I’m excited to say was one of my favorite concepts from the batch. Aside from being quintessential party imagery, the confetti manages to perfectly visualize what I think Lorelei would sound like, gossiping away on the phone.
I designed a few iterations, mixing up the type, colorizing the phone (I personally loved the gold option for the added glamour it brought to the cover!) and rendering the confetti to be more legible. In the end, however, we didn’t stray too far from the original design.
Final cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.