Brooke Hauser's The New Kids follows a year in the life of students who attend International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, and all of them are recent immigrants learning their way in a new country. They deal with homework, hallway gossip and the mysterious tradition of Prom, but they also face bigger issues. Designing a cover for such a complex narrative proved to be a challenge. Here's Brooke to describe the process:
"I didn’t really have an idea in mind for a cover, not at first anyway. I was too focused on just reporting and writing the book. That said, I had access to photos of the kids that definitely helped me to pitch the book when I was meeting with different publishers. During their junior year, many of the students who I ended up writing about as seniors had participated in a book-making project of their own. They shared their personal stories, and next to those essays were the kids’ self-portraits in black-and-white. They used marker to graffiti over their portraits, and their personalities just came shining through. For instance, one Muslim girl from Bangladesh who had been struggling with her faith scrawled 'I HATE MY RELIGION!!!' over her picture. I knew I wanted a cover that had a human element, and these photographs really conveyed that. They also showed the diversity of the class, and the individual quirks of each kid.
"My editor asked for my input from the beginning, and I initially suggested that the publisher take a look at the students’ yearbook to get some ideas. I also passed along the kids’ book of essays and self-portraits. Everyone thought that the photos of the kids were really cool, but that they wouldn’t translate to a jacket. We couldn’t feature just one student, and using a collage format wouldn’t work. What we needed was a strong concept, executed in a relatively simple way, to convey the idea that this is basically the world in a high school—kids from more than 45 different countries coexisting under a single roof (that's a photo of the class of 2009, left). Easy to say in words, but much harder to convey in a single image.
"The publisher designed and discarded a few jackets on their own before coming to me with some possibilities. One of the early covers I saw featured a stack of graduation caps that were made to look like different national flags from around the world. It was a clever idea to 'flagify' these otherwise traditional-looking mortarboards, but to me they looked stagnant sitting in a pile on a plain white background (right). We also had a different title then: New American High.
"The whole team was very open to my suggestions, and my literary agent really encouraged me not to be shy about giving my input. My husband had a good idea. He suggested showing the graduation caps being thrown up in the air, instead of sitting in a pile—the cover needed more movement, and also a sense of emotion. The graduation caps would still resemble the different national flags, but we thought that seeing them mid-air would be more inspiring than seeing them stacked.
"The art department was very responsive. I actually found a stock photo online that showed a bunch of black mortarboards soaring through a blue sky, and they used that as a model, subbing in the 'flagified' caps instead (left). Now the cover had a lot of motion, and it conveyed a sense of joy. But it wasn’t totally clear that the cover was for a narrative book; it felt a bit academic instead. At its core, this is a book about people, not about education per se; the stories just happen to take place at a high school.
"Even before we started tweaking the graduation caps cover, I’d seen other versions of possible jackets. One designer created a fun playful cover, made to look like a kid’s drawing, featuring dozens of different, colorful national flags. It had a Wes Anderson feel to it, which I liked, but other people felt that it wasn’t 'serious' enough, which I could understand. At other stages, we considered other ideas. I imagined a cover that evoked The Breakfast Club, but featuring International students in a classic high-school setting. I also championed using original student artwork. The school’s art teacher, Cynthia Chatman, had collected some amazing self-portraits done by the kids, and I thought it could be cool to use those on the cover.
"The flags-as-mortarboards cover eventually was tossed out because it didn’t convey that human element. I asked a local bookstore owner what he thought of the cover, and while he could appreciate the skill that went into designing it, ultimately what he really wanted to see was the kids. I agreed whole-heartedly, and so did other people who I polled: friends from my book club, and my website designer at the agency Kern & Lead, who also stressed the importance of simplicity. I didn’t want to ask too many people’s opinions, because working with a big publisher, there are already plenty of cooks in the kitchen. At the same time, I valued the insights of friends and family who work outside of the publishing industry—not all of their opinions were 'professional,' but they are thoughtful readers and consumers, and that counts for a lot.
"At a certain point, I became infatuated with the idea of using original photography—I love beautiful photographic book covers—but the challenge was deciding who and what to photograph. These kids come from all over the world, and we really had to be able to convey that diversity, as well as the idea that they’re all at this one high school together. That’s a lot of information to get across using a single photograph. Naturally, I suggested using several photographs, but I was told repeatedly that a single cohesive image would be much more powerful—and more visible to potential readers browsing in bookstores.
"The jacket that we ended up using was designed by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich, whose work I love. He also designed Little Bee by Chris Cleave, and I requested Roberto as a designer for The New Kids. He sent us a few mockups, each showing the school’s diversity in a different, thought-provoking, and metaphorical way. One of my favorite designs was of a composition book that upon closer inspection wasn’t just a bunch of black splotches on a white background—the black splotches were in fact made in the shapes of different countries. Very clever. Another design featured different fruits of the world, and yet another featured different desks and chairs that you might find in classrooms around the world. [See those two covers, below.] Still clever; still missing that human element.
"The publisher had the great idea of asking Roberto to play with the chairs idea and to work some people in there: teens of different ethnicities, one or two in native dress. He came back with a cover that showed repetitive images of a standard American school chair with an attached desk—and at every few chairs, there was a student who represented another part of the world. It was a great contrast between the sameness of the chairs and the different-ness of the students who filled those chairs, all set against a white background, with orange and hot-pink type. The jacket popped. Really clean, and appealing to the eye. The kids featured on the cover were found through a stock-photo agency, but the ingenuity of the design made the images work. I thought I hated the idea of stock photo, but suddenly that wasn’t a concern anymore.
"I did make a few more suggestions, though. I noticed that in one of the early takes (right), all of the students pictured were girls; one was androgynous-looking, so I didn’t notice at first. I asked for more boys to be featured. I also wanted to show at least one dark-skinned kid. Some of the models in the stock-photo images might have been tagged as 'ethnic,' but I don’t know what that means, exactly. Most looked biracial. The skin tones of the students at the International High School range from white to light-brown to ebony, and I wanted to represent as many kids from as many countries as possible.
"In the end, I love the cover (left), and I’ve gotten a ton of compliments on it, which really should be going to the designer as well as to the publisher, who worked so tirelessly to get it right. I like that the jacket is simple and yet conveys the mix of students at the school. The kids pictured are models; they are not the students I know. But at least one of the models really reminds me of a girl from Bangladesh who is in the book, so that’s a bit of a trip. The kids come across as charming and friendly, and that’s important, too. They look welcoming, as I hope America will be to them—all newcomers to our country. The author Christopher McDougall was kind enough to provide the quote at the top of the jacket that really captures the spirit of the new cover, and of the book itself: 'A glimpse of America at its best.' To me, this cover gives that glimpse."
Thanks, Brooke! I love the amount of work and thought that went into this cover, because the book itself is truly exquisite and deserves such attention. And the final image is, as you say, clean but with some pop.
What do you guys think?
