SPONSOR
DESCRIPTION
DESIGNER OF THE YEAR SUZANNE DEAN
THE SHORTLIST Charlotte
Abrams-Simpson ORION
Jasmine Aurora MOONFLOWER
Luke Bird FREELANCE
Mark Ecob MECOB/UNBOUND
Bekki Guyatt LITTLE, BROWN
Nico Taylor LITTLE, BROWN
Jo Thomson FOURTH ESTATE/ WILLIAM COLLINS
V
intage’s creative director Suzanne Dean has been behind some of the most iconic covers in publishing over more than two
decades at Penguin Random House, and 2022 saw her at the very top of her game. Dean’s highlights included a memorable,
era-evoking cover for Ian McEwan’s Lessons and bright and powerful designs for newer voices like Megan Nolan and NoViolet Bulawayo. Her impact went way beyond the frontlist though, and she proved herself the best in the business at reimagining and reinvigorating the backlists of established literary heavyweights like Haruki Murakami, for whom she produced vivid and enticing Japanese-inspired designs. She also has a flair for series like Vintage Earth, where she combined distinctive and resonant artwork for each title, with the coherence of a collection. As well as being an exceptional creative she
45
is a superb collaborator with authors, editorial teams and external designers, typographers, illustrators and photographers. Correlating design and sales is tricky, but in Dean’s case there is no doubt that the visual impact and collectability of her work consistently pushes sales beyond expectations. As one top agent put it: “Readers buy the books because they love the author— but they also buy the books because they love the design.” Judges said her work showed emotion,
depth and warmth, and balanced heritage with modernity, and commercial appeal with liter- ary sensibilities. “If you were an author paired with Suzanne, you would be overjoyed,” said the judges. “She has a backlist of iconic cover after iconic cover, but with each new one she innovates and takes risks. She reaches into stories to bring them to life through design… it raises the bar for what book design can and should be.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
