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The Vintage team has revealed how it created the striking cover of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments which has been used for all editions across the globe.
The Handmaid’s Tale sequel was published to global fanfare on Tuesday (10th September) with Vintage imprint Chatto & Windus publishing in the UK. Vintage creative director Suzanne Dean and senior production controller Polly Collier have now shared how they devised the striking blue, white and green cover for the Booker Prize-shortlisted book.
Dean told The Bookseller: “I had previously commissioned Noma Bar to illustrate what is now an iconic book cover for The Handmaids Tale [published last year for Vintage’s dystopia series]. It was obvious to me that I should work again with him on the cover for the sequel."
Dean first learned of what was labelled “The Project” from a short message from Chatto publishing director Becky Hardie and a paragraph written by Atwood.”
“What I then read was a starting point. I typically read the full manuscript or at least a proposal or synopsis, before embarking on the design process. With Noma Bar in mind, I decided I would have to ask Margaret Atwood some questions, to give me more of a steer for the cover concept.”
The initial scoping project proved complex as security around the project was so tight, and Dean, Bar and Hardie were in different corners of the globe.
“Over the next couple of weeks our secret emails traversed the globe. When I got back from holiday I worked up several options that I shared at a secret cover meeting.”
The publishing team was hoping to develop one cover that could be used on editions around the world to create maximum impact. Atwood's agent Karolina Sutton, of Curtis Brown, told The Bookseller: "I said we have to have the same cover around the world, it is that sort of publication, and some publishers around the world were sceptical, the Americans were sceptical because their market is different and it’s hard to find a cover that works worldwide. If you have an iconic image, it becomes such shorthand for the book... When it works, the impact globally is amazing because the impact is magnified." She added: "When we saw the cover though, all those anxieties went out the window because the design was so powerful."
The striking cover includes striking profile images on both the front and back covers with a neon image and ribbon. “I was keen to use the concept of a double cover. The colour green came from Margaret Atwood: 'spring green was for fresh leaves, so the girl was ready for marriage'. The neon green was a bold eye-catching decision which was off set against the rich dark blue. The jacket of The Testaments takes the iconic red handmaid image and updates her by using a bold new colour that is symbolically significant to this new story and its characters. The finishes were chosen to be sympathetic to the design.”
Polly Collier, senior production controller at Vintage, said: “It’s unusual in that it has a front and a back design, normally you’d have blurb or quotes on the back. This book is almost a back and front cover – we had spot UV [a shiny coating applied to specific areas of artwork to create a contrast] and embossing on the spine but unusually we have it on the back too.”
Collier said they wanted to include reminders from The Handmaid’s Tale (Jonathan Cape) to ensure continuity whilst embracing a modern look. “Because it’s the sequel, we wanted to remind fans, so there were some similar finishes,” she said. “There were some hidden touches – embossing on the book, for example, those were things we did trials on. On a book like this, you can afford to do [a trial]”
The vibrant green colour of the handmaid’s hood and cloak required a “double hit” of the colour which requires two printing units. “The neon green – the printing of that has been tricky. You can’t make neon out of the CMYK [colour model used for printing]. The neon green doesn’t just ‘sit’ on the page it’s printed on but is absorbed more. That neon green is a double-hit of pantone which means it’s gone through the press twice. It goes through the first time and sinks a bit and then goes through again which it gives more of a punch."
She added that “everyone loves the neon ribbon” on the first print run (for the first edition) and that the super-matte finish is one of her favourite types of finish. “Super-matte is good to use when your background is dark because it gives it a real punch. It gives something deeper and works really well on black backgrounds.”
Collier and Dean were both forced to conduct the work in secrecy to ensure security. Dean, who has held her creative director role at Vintage for almost 20 years, said: “I have worked on plenty of confidential projects...But this was unlike anything else that had come before.”
In the week preceding publication, the long-awaited novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, hours before customers received their pre-order copies almost a week early from Amazon in the US, followed by an apology from the retailer. On Friday (6th September) it was revealed that cyber criminals had spent many months trying to hack into Curtis Brown's emails, impersonating the likes of Sutton, to secure an early version of the manuscript.
The Testaments was finally published worldwide on Tuesday 10th September with a midnight launch at Waterstones' flagship store and a reading from Atwood herself – which helped drive the retailer’s sales to the biggest first day of release for 2019. Other publicity events included a National Theatre interview on publication day (hours after the press conference at the British Library), which was streamed live to 1,300 cinemas.