The process of designing the cover of Baby Cerberus
A poetry collection by Natasha Ramoutar (Wolsak & Wynn)
A few months ago, I designed a fun book cover for a poetry collection by Natasha Ramoutar. Since it recently came out on October 1 (and you can order it here!), and since I got a lot of love on my last post about designing my business card, I thought I’d devote this month’s post to analyzing my process creating the various covers.
So! Here goes.
Working with Wolsak & Wynn was very fun. I met Paul Vermeersch at AWP this year, and he gave me the opportunity to design Baby Cerberus a couple months later.
I received a cover brief of the book that included the book’s themes (pop culture, mythology, and feminism) and what the publisher and author wanted from the cover (”cute but dangerous, playful but literary, fun but not without artistic gravitas, feminine without looking chick-lit, young and energetic, maybe even a little cartoonish, but not looking YA”). I also received a vector silhouette of a Cerberus puppy that they wanted to see in at least one option.
I started reading the manuscript, annotating and taking notes as I went through. I looked for visuals, thought about the mood, and how I felt when reading the book. I wrote down page numbers and passages that inspired me, drawing simple sketches at times.1
After I read the manuscript, I went back through my notes and pieced together some common elements, colors, and themes (such as flowers, the color red, spirals, circles, movement, the number three, borders, digitality, echoes, stars, etc.). Then, I made a mood board, which explained the mood, effects, and visuals.
Once I received the okay to continue in this direction, I made some rough sketches.
I started with what I was most inspired by: all of the geometry! I used Illustrator to create different concepts and variations of all kinds of shapes. Whenever I had a new idea (making something a different color, adding a background, etc.), I duplicated the artboard and added the new idea to that one. This way, I could look back at all the variations and choose among them. What may seem uninteresting one moment could reveal itself to be the best idea at a later point.2
Experimentation sometimes breeds embarrassing results. But! Like I always say when I’m thrifting, you should always take the “maybes” in the dressing room with you because many times, the maybes are the ones that end up being your favorites. I’d like to think that this is perhaps due to an initial aversion to what is unusual or unexpected; once we get a bit more accustomed to the thing’s uniqueness, we may find we were silly to have almost passed it up.
While I was working on some of those geometric cover concepts, I switched to a more illustrative cover concept. I unfortunately have less of a trail to follow here because of how much I switched back and forth from Procreate to Photoshop, then experimenting in Photoshop (and not duplicating anything because I feel it’s a little less intuitive / easy than in Illustrator or InDesign). But, below you will find some variations of the illustrated concept.
I thought it might be interesting to create my own version of Cerberus, since that was something the author and publisher really wanted. I tried tracing out different dogs and experimenting with how they appeared on the page, but it looked a little childish (and I didn’t like my illustration all that much). But when I placed the vector image that they gave me to use, it looked too flat.
After much contemplation, putting this concept away for a while, then returning back to it, I decided to run the vector through a free ASCII generator. I really liked how it turned out and loved that the asterisks looked like little stars. To make the image less flat, I added some grain and texture to the background.
For the next cover concept, I was inspired by one of the poems in the book: “Tamagotchi.” I wanted this cover to look like a Tamagotchi, using symbols from the book to line the screen. Using a pixel brush and a marker brush in Procreate, I traced out stars, the Cerberus vector I was given, lavender flowers, and part of a fence. I took these drawings and placed them around a grid, messing around with the colors to see which worked best.
Finally, I scanned through all the cover concepts I had and chose my favorites. I imported them into InDesign and started messing around with type (what fonts to use, where to place the title and the author name, what color to make it, etc.). This process resulted in quite a few options (not all of which are included below).
After solidifying further which ones I felt were the best out of each design, I made a presentation that explained my design choices for each cover concept. I also felt like there was enough variation between some of the geometric options that I made a fourth cover concept (instead of my usual three). Below you can see the covers that were created and my thoughts behind each one.
After this, the direction changed a bit. This sometimes happens, especially with book covers. Sometimes we think we know what we want, then we see it, and we realize that’s not in fact what we wanted.
The author decided on a new design direction - this time with an emphasis on purple, more illustration work, and more options with the Cerberus silhouette vector. This was a bit of a challenge for me as my illustrations tend to be a bit more realistic - though I did try my hand at it in one of the cover concepts I showed them next. I illustrated the third option below; the first two are stock images.
The author and publisher liked the second option best but wanted to play with the type a bit more. I messed around with it, and once everyone was content, I finished the spine and back. And here is the final cover!
news
Self-publishing? Here’s a new article from Book Design Made Simple all about distribution.
The What Goes Into a Book? exhibition at IIT is free and open to the public until May 2025. I went to the panel discussion on November 4, and it was really amazing hearing the designers talk about the editorial design process.
what i’m reading
Unusual Fragments (Two Lines Press, 2025)
The Common - Issue No. 05
On Book Design by Richard Hendel (Yale University Press, 1998) - One of my favorite books I’ve ever read on book design. So good.
what i’m listening to
Broadcast | Tender Buttons (2005): indietronica, ambient pop, neo-psychedelia
Charlotte Gainsbourg | 5:55 (2006): dream pop, art pop, french pop, indie pop
New Order | Low-Life (1985): synthpop, new wave, alternative dance
What are your thoughts?
I’d love to know what your favorite cover concept was! Or maybe you have a question that you think I can answer - always feel free to comment, email, or message me below.
Thank you for reading Hadley House!
Subscribe to receive new editorial design resources, inspiration, tips & tricks, and more.
I hope you enjoyed this post!
I’d love to get to know you on Instagram or LinkedIn.
Hadley Hendrix is an Editorial Designer based in Chicago, specializing in publication design and typesetting. She works with magazines and publishers to design, layout, and typeset the covers and interiors of their publications. From ensuring an authentic representation of a publication to using em dashes and en dashes correctly, she immerses herself in the details of every project to create a polished product. Visit my website to see some of my work.
Need a designer or typesetter? Just want to pop in and say hi? I would love to talk with you! Please email me at hadleynikolehendrix@gmail.com.
Catherine Casalino’s Domestika course Design Thinking for Book Covers and Visual Concepts was very instrumental in this process.
I was very inspired by Genis Carreras’s Domestika course Graphic Design: Communicate Complex Ideas with Simple Images, where he discusses how geometry can create very impactful images. He also shares helpful tips for navigating Illustrator.