Julie Chen Photography

Last spring I received a phone call from my bestie at Tyndale House Publishers that went something like this:

art director: “Julie, we need you to step in & design the cover for Ann Voskamp’s upcoming Christmas book called The Greatest Gift. The thing is, we need a cover APPROVED by next Wednesday as Ann is leaving for Africa & she needs to see it before she goes.”

{now, mind you, this was the Thursday before Memorial Day & we are designing a CHRISTMAS book with winter items & everything is closed on Monday for the holiday & to have a cover APPROVED by Wednesday means you need to do a photoshoot before then & design the cover options & ahhhh!}

me: “WHAT??!!!????!!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? I just finished leading a study of Ann’s One Thousand Gifts & it’s changed my life! OF COURSE I will design this cover!!!!”

I hang up the phone and panic a bit. The good news was Ann had very specific cover direction: pure, simple, clean, white, elegant. Hands outstretched wearing white mittens holding a gorgeous paper ornament from the interior of the book {there are 25 of the most beautiful paper cut sculpted ornaments you will ever feast your eyes on!} The bad news was all of the stores were now full of summer goods: swimsuits & sundresses & I do not have a pair of white wool mittens!

So, I call my good friend Sugar Cookie Lady {aka the real, live Martha Stewart in my world} & ask her, “GIRL! Can you make a pair of white wool mittens for me? Where can I find sweaters to cut apart at this time of year?!” {“Oh & by the way, I need them by Monday 🙂 thanks!”} Her advice {as usual} was right on: “Go to the local Salvation Army. You will find plenty of goodies there.” She was so right. I found 5 sweaters & 2 scarves, all for $20!

In the meantime, I also searched ETSY for a pair of cream cashmere mittens, as we wanted to have an option of a more elegant pair versus a more organic & down to earth pair. {The down to earth pair won… it is so “Ann” as she lives on a farm}

On Tuesday we did a photoshoot in house. I somehow became the hand model. Not sure how that happened, but I’ve done it before. It was hilarious. The fabulous Stephen Vosloo {Tyndale’s photographer} had ordered fake snow. Just add water & POOF! Snow grows. We wanted a magical feeling of light snow falling on the pure white cover. I stood there for over an hour holding out that ornament as 2-3 people stood above me, to the side & in front of me throwing handfuls of snow at me. I wish we had a behind the scenes shot of that to show you! In the end, about 300 + images were shot & my forearms were aching! {Oh, the work of a hand model!}

We then narrowed down the images & I went home to create the cover. Now, a lot of people ask me, “What does it mean to be a book designer? What do you do?” Well, let me tell you: a book cover starts as a blank page & we are given the title, sales copy, byline & marketing direction for the “feel” of the book. From there it is the designer’s job to create the look of the book, both inside & out. As I looked through the images, the white on white as Ann desired started to look very abstract to me, so the cover above I found a shot Stephen had done which showed just a touch of my hair falling over my shoulders. I thought it was so necessary to give the image context as one quickly walks by at the bookstore & glances at the image. It was the chosen one.

Then onto the rest of the book: I wanted to pick up on the icy blue of the title for the spine as it was such a beautiful, wintery color. As a designer, you also create the entire jacket {cover, spine, back cover, & flaps}. A fun thing about hardcover book design is that you get to pick out the “headband” which is the cloth material on the top of the spine which helps bind the pages together, as well as the endsheets! My art director had designed the interior of the book & worked with the paper illustrator & I had loved the snowflake pattern she used on chapter openers, so I chose to use those for the endsheets & again contrast the blue with the white.

I also created this 8×10 fine art print for Ann as a gift, using some of her quotes from the book! Love!

Come back later this week & I will be giving away a FREE download of Ann Voskamp’s life verse {which if you have studied the 1,000 Gifts book, you already know what that is!}

Oh & please go to her live webcast Christmas on the Farm this coming Thursday!

I hope you’ve liked learning a bit about the behind the scenes of book design! I plan on blogging about some of my other covers soon. Enjoy FREE shipping in the shop to kick start your holiday shopping.

Grace & Peace,

Julie