Where My Heart Used To Beat - A Cover StoryDesigner Glenn O’Neill reveals the inspiration and proces

Where My Heart Used To Beat - A Cover StoryDesigner Glenn O’Neill reveals the inspiration and process behind his gilded cover for Sebastian Faulks’s new book Where my Heart Used to Beat.The title is very lyrical and descriptive so it seemed bestto avoid depicting a figure, or people, on the jacket as it would then be assumedto be referring directly to them. For a novel with such an emotional andhistorical sweep, a more lateral strategy was required. Any illustrative orphotographic element would need to allude to the title, rather than be overly specific.I began the design process by simply laying out thetypography, and seeing where it led. The most satisfying word breaks occurredwhere the title occupied four lines; it seemed to give a slow, considered rhythmwhen read back. This felt appropriate considering the author adapted the words ofthe title from the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem, In Memoriam. The lettering used (the font Requiem), benefited being in all lower case. Subliminally it looksmore personal. I also considered, but rejected, using handwritten calligraphy, whichdid initially suggest itself as hand-penned correspondence features oftenwithin the narrative. So I had typographic structure, with the lettering rangingfrom the right hand side. Now the jacket needed elements to complement the type,without revealing too much of the story. The book spans the twentieth century,with both world wars being pivotal to the lives of the novel’s protagonists.Its locations range from an island off France to the coast and beaches of Anzioin 1944, to England in the 1960s and back to the trenches of the Western Front.Amongst many threads the novel covers a passionate love affair, the nature ofmemory, and a doctor’s research into the workings of the mind. Iconsulted with the author and publisher on ideas that may be interpretedgraphically. I initially tried a general backgroundof marble statuary behind the lettering, kept vague enough that it may also beread as human flesh. The effect was too coldly classical. Then I thought againof the letters sent by soldiers back from the war zones, many officially editedto prevent troop positions being compromised. I photographed strips of torn paperthinking these could suggest censorship, and lay them horizontally under thelettering, it looked effective, but it needed more.A couple of the torn edges resembled shorelines,the kind of serendipity that I like to exploit where possible. I enhanced byimporting rock textures from pictures of Mediterranean coastlines. A monochromephotograph of Sicily, sourced from Getty images, had the most elegiac feel. Thereflections and glinting of the sea added a further dimension. Keeping theeffect semi-abstract was important: the layering is not always logical and thesea textures lie translucently over the land in a couple of places in thedesign. This suggested to me layers of memory and the past intermingling withthe present – a major theme of the book.  The strips of coastline continue ontothe back of the book, contrasted in scale by ghosted impressions of umbrellapines on the flaps and annotated illustrations of sea urchins on the endpapers– both organic elements that are described within the text.  Various colourways were explored, themost effective being a warm terracotta, harmonising with greys and golds on anivory texture. The design was proofed up by overprinting some sections on to asilver foil, giving an iridescent lustre to the final jacket. Where my Heart Used to Beat is available on 10 September, so you can see Glenn O’Neill’s cover design, and the stunning sea anemone inside cover first-hand. -- source link

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