You’re likely familiar with Paul Thurlby’s striking cover design for The Burnout - the bestselling novel by Sophie Kinsella that has remained a fixture on the fiction charts for the past two years.
Paul later illustrated the cover for What Does It Feel Like, a deeply personal, semi-autobiographical story inspired by the author’s own life-changing diagnosis.
This year, 11 more Sophie Kinsella titles get the Paul Thurlby treatment, as he teamed up with Penguin Randomhouse to reimagine the authors backlist with his signature character-driven artwork.
We caught up with Paul to find out how he approached the almost 2 year project;
What is your process of distilling an entire novel into a single image?
Reading the first third of each of Sophie’s novels gave me the general idea without giving too much away. I also had some descriptions of the characters passed down from the author. I’ll take notes of some words and phrases as I read the story. Anything that pops out. Then, I will research images around those words and phrases. While this research is percolating in my brain, I will start on getting down some ideas. I might add quite a few roughs on the morning of deadline day. This is often when I have the most clarity. I like to show as many ideas and variations as I can.
How did you approach 'What Does It Feel Like', given its more personal and emotional themes?
There was a lot of guidance for the cover of Sophie’s book ‘What it Feels Like’ which is based on her experiences of being diagnosed with brain cancer. Richard Ogle, who was the art director at Penguin, had given me the idea of the scene being in the hospital. He wanted to show the contrast of the character going from her favourite glamorous dress to a hospital gown. When it comes to such a sensitive subject matter the idea is more to allude to something than to portray literally. Less is more in this case.
Were you asked to depict specific situations from each book? or was this a very open brief?
When I was approached to illustrate the back catalogue, Penguin Randomhouse were happy to give me a bit more freedom to come up with my own ideas - something that I had no problem accepting. I enjoy solving problems and coming up with ideas.
Were any of the titles particularly fun or challenging to reinterpret?
A couple of the books were more difficult because there was nothing obvious visually. ‘Love Your Life’ was most tricky, I think. We went through many roughs and changes before deciding on a final. From the covers I had most freedom with, I most enjoyed working on ‘The Undomestic Goddess’ and ‘My Not So Perfect Life’. I’m particularly happy with those two.
I have spent years drawing faces and studying expressions and how the smallest changes can transform a look. I like to be expressive when drawing and the eyes and mouth can be sketched very rapidly to capture this. I like that immediacy.
What’s your dream book or author to illustrate a cover for - classic or contemporary?
I’ve always wanted to illustrate and design the covers for ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell. That would be a dream job!
