The making of the cover design for How to Speak so People Listen by Mike Clayton

The illustrator reads the book and draws sketches for the cover.

Client: All three are spot on, they reflect the ideas of the book well and are simply cool. I choose the first one with the shark, it’s not so scary.

The sketch is approved, the background illustration is drawn, the ISBN code is verified, time to give it all to the typesetter.

Chief typesetter: The fish are too small. You need to try to enlarge it and submerge all of the text under water.

The typesetter manipulates the multilayered illustration rearranging and enlarging the fish.

Chief typesetter: No, you got it wrong. You can’t change somebody’s illustration even when the author left the layers unflattened. You need to simply manipulate the scale to make the gold fish larger and bring the water level higher to cover the author’s name.

Making changes.

Chief typesetter: Nope, it became worse. Let’s get back to the original draft.

Going back to the first layout, showing to the editor, showing to the art director and sending to the client for approval. The client makes minor adjustments to the back side and accepts the job.