The Fell by Robert Jenkins
Cover design by Jason Ascomb
The Fell is an indie coming of age novel written by Robert Jenkins and published by RedDoor Press. Odds are you probably haven’t heard of this book. It was published by a relatively small publishing house, written by a relatively unknown author, and it features a relatively questionable and unstable narrator. And yet, I consider this book to be one of the best hidden gems in contemporary coming-of-age fiction novels. This intro will probably be longer than usual, so bear with me.
Growing up surrounded by books, I was often faced with the daunting question of what my favourite one was, to which I always answered The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger as if by default. That book had remained through many years my most underlined and annotated book. Yes, I annotate passages and phrases that stand out to me and I know it’s ironic of me to ask (considering the title of this website) but please don’t judge me.
I realise I’m probably in the minority when saying this, but the number one thing that makes me fall in love with a book is the writing style and how poetic the prose is, something which I thought The Catcher in the Rye had mastered completely. So it’s quite an understatement to say that I was surprised to find that a random debut novel debunked it from that secure number one spot. There is not a single chapter in my copy of The Fell that has been left unmarked, and I had to resist the urge of underlining every other sentence; it’s that beautiful.
I find immense comfort in knowing I can open this book on any random page, start reading, and feel engulfed by the familiar story. This comfort extends from the story itself to the actual book in its physical form. Looking over to my bookshelf and seeing that familiar green spine is very reassuring and it brings me a warm feeling I can’t quite describe. Below, Jason Anscomb who designed the cover of this novel, walks through his creation process.
What is your usual creative process for developing a book cover design? How did you approach this project in particular?
For works of fiction I try to read as much of the manuscript as I can. The design should ideally be a reaction to the text. I use a combination of mood-board work, photo research and very basic hand-drawn sketches to get ideas going. It’s often important not to commit to any one idea at too early a stage in the process and to do lots of very quick ideas to test out your initial ideas. For the cover of The Fell, I decided that it would benefit from a photographic based cover. Then it was a case of selecting several bits of imagery from the book and seeing what I could find. Luck can often add a helping hand in the picture selection process. Going off on tangents is often a good thing when doing picture research. It can feel like a treasure hunt and involves looking at hundreds of images. I often find a thesaurus handy at this point to look up keywords I may not have thought of otherwise.
I assume you’ve read the book before working on the cover. Were there any specific moments in the story, or any particular images that stood out to you and influenced your design?
I tend to recall books as streams of visual imagery more than anything else. A list of this imagery for this book would include the mannequin, a flock of pigeons, boxing, face-painted boys and cruel teachers. I think it’s also hard to read a book and not draw comparisons to other popular culture. I thought of Lord of The Flies, One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, A Kestrel for a Knave, and Stand by Me when reading it.
How was the process of working with the author and the publisher, do you usually bounce ideas back and forth or did you have a lot of freedom?
It depends on every job, but generally speaking publishers are looking to you to come up with ideas. They might send you a few covers of other books that they think have the right feel as a starting point. The author tends not to get involved in the book cover design process until near the end. The author is shown the rough cover design only once the publisher has refined and selected a design from a selection of initial cover roughs. It can be sometimes be the case that the author hates what has been created, then it’s often a question of starting again. Gaining approval of design is quite a nerve-wracking experience!
For the cover of The Fell I did take a wrong turn at an early point in the design process; I was hell-bent on using rough hand painted type for the title. In the book as you know the boys take to wearing face-paint in a tribal kind of way, so visually this felt strong as a possible design route. I sent a super quick rough to RedDoor Press and they were quick to suggest that I try something else. They were right. The cover looked too stark and didn’t have a literary feel to it. It’s also generally not a good idea to portray the characters of the book in such a direct way. You are in effecting robbing the reader of conjuring up their own interpretation of the characters by doing this.
And finally, a question I always like to ask; did you have any setbacks or happy accidents during the process of creating the cover?
The happy accident came when working up the type. I realised that it could be interesting to try and circle the figure with type and hold the figure in a vice-like grip; a figure imprisoned if you like. At one point I started also thinking about the boy being like a slab of meat. Could he hang from one of the letters as though he was hanging from a butcher’s hook? In the final design, the photo itself has a certain rusty quality and I like the fact that the colour of the water is not picture-postcard blue. The figure has the feel of something frozen in time. I think the boy on the cover more than anything represents feral wild youth.
You can read more about Jason’s work on his website.
