David Fickling Books

Having already designed several editions of Harry Potter for Bloomsbury Publishing when David Fickling Books asked us to design a book of essays for Philip Pullman we jumped at the chance to add another of our favourite young adult authors to our list. This collection of 32 talks, published articles, and prefaces written between 1997 and 2014 addresses “the business of the storyteller”. Inspiration for the cover is taken from the title Daemon Voices; Pullman has often stated that his daemon, or the physical manifestation of the human soul in the form of an animal, as described inPullman’s in His Dark Materials trilogy, is a raven.

We commissioned illustrator and wood engraver John Lawrence to create a special wood engraving of Philip’s daemon for use on the cover. Working with printers Clays we organised print test to enable us to achieve the best result for printing specification directly to the cloth bound case. We also worked directly with Philip and his editors to design the text pages of the book, keeping the feeling of the original talks and articles but updating them into a book format.

It is said that sometimes you have to suffer for your art, or in this case scare yourself rigid, and Peadar O’Guilin’s The Call is pretty scary! Desbcribed by author Danielle Vega as “a must-read for anyone who’s been sleeping too well at night” we made this cover as intense as the story. A swirling silver vortex leaves you falling into a world below where the fractured bones of previous victims sink into the mud…