How to Design a Book Cover: ZAFTIG

By Molly Raynor

Hello! Welcome to How to Design a Book Cover, a series from A Book Designer’s Notebook in which I share my design process from start to finish. This is a bonus series for paid-tier subscribers.

This week, I’m sharing the process behind my cover for ZAFTIG by Molly Raynor.

The Brief

When I work with publishers, I receive a creative brief that usually shares a description of the book, technical specifications, potential art direction from the author, and art direction from the press itself. Here’s the description this book:

In her exceptional debut collection of poems, Molly Raynor welcomes you to sit at the table with her ancestors, mothers, sisters, friends, and wild women, as she glues together moving memories of waxy-lipped kisses, and potato peel dresses. Ghosts of the old country, lost loves, and the unborn haunt ZAFTIG. Raynor’s poems are imbued with deep Judaic traditions, and a sprinkle of Yiddish. They burst forth with sensuality, survival, and the push-pull of women’s bodies as coveted flesh. Braiding together words like bread to lay on the table in honor of the beauty & the terror of living, these poems breathe new life. Inspired by the past, but firmly planted in the present, ZAFTIG joyfully takes up space like the powerful women who fill Raynor’s heart and words.

The author’s grandmother—Grandy—is essential to this book and this image of her was requested to be used on the cover.

I was also given a specific color palette to work with.