Earlier this year, Simon & Schuster revealed a set of new covers for the Curse Workers series by Holly Black. Unlike the photo-based Noir-ish look of the original covers (with their striking red-black-white color scheme), the new books feature illustrated covers in an art deco style. Each book’s art features a unique color scheme: yellow for White Cat, red for Red Glove, and purple for Black Heart.
To talk about the transition to the new covers, we chatted with the team at Simon & Schuster:
- Lizzy Bromley, Executive Art Director, Books for Young Readers
- Lauren Rille, Associate Art Director, Atheneum, McElderry and Beach Lane Books
One of the things I loved about the original covers for the Curse Workers series was the old school noir feel they had going on. But the new design has a cool art deco feel, that still fits with the mobster theme, but in a very different way. Tell us a bit about the concept behind the new design!
We made the decision NOT to try do something that fit into the visual mold of the current genre — we also wanted it to be radically different from the direction we took on the first design. For us, that meant moving away from a straight photographic treatment (which is fairly standard for YA and Teen books these days). Instead, we wanted an illustrative approach that that would work for the teen audience. What on earth were we thinking!?!
We know a large part of deciding to design new covers was to try and reach a new audience. What about the new covers do you think will attract different readers than the original covers?
We wanted to be sure to appeal to girls with this direction. As cool as the first covers were, in retrospect we feared they might have spoken more to boy readers than girls, and this book is definitely a teen boy AND girl read. We chose to go with an illustrator new to S&S, Yehrin Tong. Finding Yehrin was really the first step in bringing this new vision together, thanks so Lizzy Bromley. Using Yehrin’s beautiful, lyrical artwork, we tried to straddle the line between a figurative and an iconic cover, believing that this too might attract a different kind of reader.
Is there any special little detail we should keep our eye out for in the new covers? Something we might not notice on first glance?
If you look VERY, VERY carefully, you will see, hidden in the swirls in each cover, the names of every state capitol in the continental US.*
*just kidding! But if you squint and blur your eyes, you will notice that the two heads on BLACK HEART form the shape of a heart. Can you figure out what the hidden shapes are for the other two books ??????
Ten, fifteen years down the road … say the Curse Workers series is getting a new repackaging. How do you think you might tackle a third cover look for the books?
Knowing the way things work in this industry, we’ll probably just go back to the original covers 🙂
Thanks to Lizzy & Lauren for answering all our questions!
For the comments: Which covers do you like better? Tell us which ones & why in the comments below!
Novel Novice 
Not to be harsh, but I despise the new covers. Trying to appeal to boys is HARD (they can be extremely picky readers), but the original covers did it wonderfully and were an easy sell when I was recommending them. Girls will read practically anything, and the original covers were just fine to attract them (they most definitely attracted me).
Now pulling away from the hard-to-get boys to appeal to the easy-to-get girls was a stupid move in my opinion. I truly do not understand the new flowery covers in connection with the gritty-ish series and think they are boring, don’t show what the books are about AT ALL, and don’t really appeal to anyone. I think they did Holly Black’s amazing series a horrific disservice, and the books, instead of standing out as they did before, now fade into the very dark background.
Sadly, my new mantra for recommending the series is: “I know the covers are boring, but it’s an AWESOME series! I PROMISE!”
I actually like both but I like the original more. They spell things out for the reader.
I don’t think either of the covers really speak to the novel, I’m not a fan of faces on book covers. I enjoy text heavy covers so I have to say I like the new ones !