I know a thing or two about Paul Buckley. He looks like this:

 

 

And he is very busy all the time. He's an art director in charge of no fewer than eight publishing imprints, including Penguin, Viking, Penguin Press, and Riverhead, and works on roughly 600(!) book jackets and covers a year. He has a fancy and impressively lengthy job title: Executive Vice President Creative Director at Penguin. He oversees an incredibly talented team of designers and art directors and does some designing himself. He lives in Brooklyn. He is generous with his time. That last fact I can vouch for personally, because he set aside his busy schedule to answer my hard-hitting, provocative questions. But why interview Paul Buckley? Why now? Penguin 75: Designers|Authors|Commentary has just been published (on the occasion of Penguin's 75th aniversary), and it was edited and introduced by Buckley, with an additional foreword by Chris Ware. My own encounter with this book was love at first sight. I truly could not put it down, so rather than sit awkwardly hunched over my desk to devour it in one setting, I adjourned to the living room sofa and finished it there. Obviously, it is a gorgeously designed book, with an eye-catching cover:

 

 

Yet the stories inside are amazing, too. Buckley selected seventy-five covers that represent the very best of Penguin art from the last ten years, and the book features a detailed behind-the-scenes exploration of the making of each cover. It's fascinating. There are commentaries from authors, editors, designers, and artists, and many of the anecdotes are quite funny and surprising. Contributors include Paul Auster, Daniel Clowes, Roz Chast, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Ian Buruma, Art Spiegelman, Gautam Malkani,  Elizabeth Gilbert, Tony Millionaire, Hanif Kureishi, and Jedediah Berry. Trust me, this isn't one big praise fest. Divas emerge---authors as well as designers--and lingering gripes are aired in full. ("Who's really telling the truth in these pages?" Buckley writes. "You decide.") Certain authors are pretty honest about hating their covers, and others are delirious with gratitude at how an artist visually captured exactly what their book is about. Some illustrators reveal that they kick themselves with regret long after a book is out. "For me, once something is published, and it's too late to correct anything, that's when I see everything that's wrong," admits Roz Chast. "This happens every time I complete a project."

 

Anyhow, if you love books, and love Penguin Books, and are interested in book design and fussy about which books are in your home--no movie tie-in editions for me, ever, thanks!--well, you will probably enjoy this book as much as I do. And it makes a great gift, too. CC: Paul, how long have you been at Penguin, and what did you do before working there? PB: I’ve been at Penguin 20 years. Before that I was paying my rent through freelance illustration and design. CC: As Creative Director, what's the best part of your job? Why do you love designing books? PB: There are so many reasons to each of these questions. But if I had to pick just one thing, I suppose the best part of my job is empowering others, and sometimes myself, to create imagery that will have real life hopefully gracing the cover of a great book. I enjoy designing books because every publication is unique, so each needs a different visual solution. I’ve always loved books, so doing what I do seems so natural, that I cannot imagine doing anything else. CC: Which covers have you designed that you're particularly proud of, perhaps because the process of getting there was unusually challenging? PB: My work tends to be very simple and spare, so when I do something that is a bit complex, that always feels good to me as it’s not my norm – also, every time I do something a bit complicated, it winds up getting killed, so the ones that squeak through are rare. My greatest hits are up on my website, but if I was to pick a few they’d be: The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, my Eisner stuff, my Delillo work, Borges, Vollman, and Boyle.

 

 

CC: How did the idea for Penguin 75 come about? It marks your 20th anniversary with the company. And how long did you work on this project? PB: As you note, I’ve been here at Penguin a good while and I’m very proud of the work my department does; so how to show it off, without it just looking like yet another cover design book or cover annual? For me, the back stories of how these covers come into being are fascinating and I’ve always thought lovers of books would enjoy reading how authors and designers and editors and publishers and agents all go back and forth trying to agree, or force, a cover into being. So that’s what I pitched---the cover in full on the right hand page, and on the left page the various cast of characters discuss what it took to get there, including preliminary sketches, rejected covers, influences, etc. All the gory details are laid bare on the page. It was never my intention that this book be part of our anniversary celebration, but when I pitched the idea, my publisher, Kathryn Court, liked the idea and said put it on the fast track and lets get it together for the celebration. Hence the title Penguin 75. But it works and the timing was just perfect. [Graphic designer] Chris Brand and I worked on the project for a solid three months straight. We lived in the studio and it was insane – there’d be nights I’d stumble home at three in the morning just to do it all over again the next day. It was incredibly hard, and I’m deliriously happy it’s over. CC: How would you describe your aesthetic? PB: Simple, sharp, clean, bold. I don’t do the overly layered thing, and I don’t like too much fuss. CC: In the book, I love that you include such candid insights from authors and designers alike. Some are dazzled by what's been produced: Paul Auster declares his cover "a masterpiece of contemporary design." Yet the authors of the gloriously named 100 Facts About Pandas felt in the end that their cover was "still completely so wrong." Upon seeing his cover for the first time, Will Christopher Baer recalls that he considered shoving the books "into a pillowcase and drowning them like a litter of two-headed puppies." And Garrison Keillor admits that the cover for his novel Love Me "gives me a bad case of the yips." How do such negative responses affect designers, knowing they have done their best work and the author is deeply unhappy with what they've created? PB: I’m thrilled that some authors really let it all hang out  as to what they truly think of their covers–in fact, Garrison Keillor’s comment is hands down my favorite in this book. Of course, it’s all easier to hear after the fact and it is very tough hearing that an author is unhappy with their cover when you just sent it off to them, hoping for the best. That worry---will the author like this?---will never go away. In the end, it all comes down to that. Everything we do, at every turn, is met by a volley of subjective opinions long before it ever goes out the door headed for the author’s feedback. So many in-house hurdles already jumped, or maybe your editor or publisher forced you to do a cover you think is crap, and off it goes to the author who thinks, “What hack banged this out?” It can be quite embarrassing having work you are not proud of sent to an author whose writing you really respect. But that’s the job: it’s a collaboration of many people working on a book, and many of them are closet art directors---or CADS, as I call them for short. And the opposite happens all the time as well. Every day we send work we’re extremely proud of just to hear the next day that the author hates it. But again, that’s the job, and book designers must have very thick skins and learn to let go, move on, try something else. CC: How did the design process work with David Byrne, who served as both author and illustrator? In the book, you describe the collaboration as initially daunting.

 

 

PB: Daunting only in the sense that I have huge respect for David Byrne and am acutely aware that he knows good design when he sees it; so handing him your design work is like handing the litmus paper to the litmus tester. But a lot of the big deal authors who are comfortable in their own skin, are the most laid back to work with, and we sailed through that cover with ease. David clearly stated what he wanted and never back peddled or over-thought the process. It’s the nervous second time authors that are going to torture you–the ones that have to follow up their big debut success and so much is riding on their follow up book. And poets. I don’t know what it is about poets but they were born to torture cover designers.

 

CC: I enjoyed the story, regarding the cover of Twitterature,  about how you lost a creative battle to a brilliant sixteen-year-old design intern, Amelia, who described the previous (rejected) cover attempts as "a little too earnest and not quite the irreverent brand of amusing that to me was the essence of the book." Ouch. Her design was selected over yours.

 

PB: Of all the battles I lost during that particular cover, I loved losing that battle to Amelia the best. You can read the whole story here.

 

CC: There's a crack whore anecdote--involving the cover for William T. Vollmann's novel, The Royal Family--that must be shared as well. The author visited a "fine crack hotel" to shoot his own cover, and reports, "In twenty minutes we were all happy."

 

PB: I’m always down with a good crack whore story! Who isn't? Please click here for that one.

 

CC: Could you talk about typography? Obviously it's a crucial design element, but one that most people don't often stop to consider.

 

PB: Typography is an art form, and like any art form, it sets a mood. It’s not just some utilitarian thing sitting on top of the art, and it is crucial that the type complement, coordinate with, marry, the rest of the imagery on the cover. It’s true that most people don’t pay it much mind and that’s part of the beauty of so much typography, as it’s often happy playing a quiet secondary role--but when you see bad type, you know it--unless it’s been given proper consideration, it just will not work and can ruin the most gorgeous piece of art. Type is like your shoes–and no one wants to leave the house in clown shoes.

 

CC: What makes a book a work of art as an object?

 

PB: Many things have to come together well to create a great cover, but it’s handsome production effects added on top of that, that turn it into a gorgeous object. Production details are hugely important---nice paper, and smart use of foily bits, spot glosses, matte finishes, die cuts, trim sizes, etc.---all add up to a recipe that works, or does not.

 

CC: Please tell me about the Penguin Ink series. It came about for personal reasons, yes?

 

PB: Yes. While researching tattoo artists for a piece I was to later get on my arm, I came to the all-too- obvious conclusion that these artists are immensely talented and not often tapped for commercial projects. So I pitched the idea, which I thought would meet with dubious results, but everyone loved it and we’re running hard with it, and getting some very beautiful and unique packages.

 

 

CC: Can a cover make or break a book's success? Is there an instance you can think of where this seems to have happened? In the book, author Ellen Ruppel Shell attests that "you can indeed SELL a book by its cover." And to me, Shane Jones' wonderfully eccentric novel Light Boxes--- which I reviewed for BookForum, and loved---is a great example of a cover that compels you to pick up the book and buy it.

 

PB: I think if a book is utterly fantastic, it will get the right word of mouth and home-grown publicity. But I do believe a good book cover can help, and a bad book cover can contribute to a book’s demise, especially on new authors who have not yet built a track record. I’ve seen many awesome book covers go on very bad books and those books go absolutely nowhere, so I firmly believe you could put the Mona Lisa on a bad book and it will still disappear. In Penguin 75, the covers The Angel Maker and In The Woods, both great covers by Jen Wang, were said to greatly help sales---and both books are terrific reads. In the book, Elizabeth Gilbert also states that she believes that [designer] Helen Yentus’s brilliant cover for Eat Pray Love helped her book become a phenomenon. True? And to what degree? Who knows, but those covers certainly didn’t hurt. Regarding Light Boxes, I wish I was presented daily with books that unique to work on. Such a weirdly beautiful and fantastic little book.

 

CC: What makes you look at a cover--by any publisher--and think, "Wow, that's bad"? What kinds of elements are a big turn-off?

 

PB: It’s a gut feeling; but it’s clear when a book designer does not care enough about their craft to grow or make refined decisions. They are called hacks, and they get ferreted out very quickly in the good houses.

 

CC: What makes a cover exceptional?

 

PB: Distinction. Something you’ve never seen before, be it loud or subtle, will grab your focus till you figure out just what you're looking at.

 

CC: Thanks, Paul! PB: Hey, thank you.

 P.S.: Check out the Penguin 75 website, which features great archival photos, videos, excerpts, contests, and more. [Images: Paul Buckley: hearhear.us; Penguin 75 cover and logo: Penguin.com; other covers: Casualoptimist.com]