Disrupting Design

Having sent my book off to the editor yesterday, I have spent today doing some Research & Development for cover designs. It's a tricky business ... I have literally ended up designing about 20 covers. I really wanted to go for a less is more cover but when I showed Jeff the first one that I designed, he said he thought it looked more like a funeral pamphlet! Well, one of the reasons I love him is because he tells me it like it is and as soon as he had said it, I saw exactly what he meant. So, I have thrown all caution to the wind and started experimenting.

When I was doing my MA Drama, for my finals at The Atrium, University of South Wales, Dr. Emily Underwood Lee from the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling was my Supervisor. She taught me a very interesting lesson. When you think you have your piece in the bag, disrupt it, turn it upside down, introduce something that shouldn't be there and see what happens. At first, I found this notion very distressing. After spending hours, days, weeks on a piece, one's work almost becomes sacrosanct.To disrupt it feels just plain wrong but I trusted her and found a wonderful freedom in this level of experimenting. For instance, here's a cover replacing my face with with a robot angel!

Now, I'm not saying that I am going to use any of today's designs, they have been a journey of Research and Development but it is interesting to see all 20 of them side by side ... because every single one of them is nice but not right ... so now I need to spend time unpicking why.

Even if, at the end of all this, I go back to my very first 'funeral pamphlet' design, that's ok. That's art. I go back to it informed.