Madeline Miller's novel Circe is bold. In the world of legend and epic poetry, dominated by men
and wars and prophecy, this is a story about a minor greek goddess carving out a path of her own.
I read this book towards the beginning of this year-long quarantine, when our situations somewhat
paralleled hers. Circe is exiled by the gods the island of Aiaia where she cultivates independence
but must also grapple with eternal isolation. Today, I'm going to attempt redesigning a cover
for a book that has resonated with me. To be clear, there's nothing wrong with the
current versions. This is more practice than anything. These covers are both very strong and
have an iconic feel to them. I just don't think I was the audience they were made to appeal to.
So, my goal is to design a cover that more deeply reflects my experience with the book. But,
to only think about myself would mean disregarding the important commercial facet of design. Yes,
a cover is a piece of art, but it also needs to sell. What we need to ask ourselves is,
whose attention do we compete for? Let's define our audience. In an interview with John Green,
Grace Han, who was a cover designer once said of her process that to guide her,
she thinks about who would most need the book at hand. I read Circe when I felt more alone than
usual and when that loneliness was accentuated by loss. This book is meaningful to me because it
allowed me to escape somewhere lush and green, to heal and grow again alongside its main character.
When I ask myself, who most needs to find this book, my answer is, anyone who at the moment feels
isolated, worthless, or alone. Or alternatively, anyone who was left devastated after reading The
Song of Achilles, Circe will build you back up. Of course, I was only able to give this answer after
a thorough reading. I made notes about characters and setting, memorable passages, symbols, similes,
tone and how these elements in combination contributed to its themes. According to Peter
Mendelsund, dishwasher, bookseller, butler, classical pianist, chicken farmer, teacher,
and cover designer, the most important elements to look out for are unique details that support
the metaphorical weight of the entire book. He says, one of the challenges is to resist the urge
to pluck an image from the text itself. If you pay attention only to visual cues, for example
the color of her hair or the climate, you'll miss the point of the book, and almost never are those
kinds of details the point of the book. One of the metaphors I highlighted was the conch shell. Early
on, Circe is asked by her brother Aëetes: how does your divinity feel? And after some thought,
she says, a conch, with nothing inside. Air. The gods themselves are beautiful and indestructible,
but also vain and prideful and empty. For much of her early days, Circe lives passively with
this emptiness. Her conflict with immortality is prominent. As she says, I thought once that gods
are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging,
and can hold nothing in their hands. However, the conch only appears once. It doesn't capture the
essence of the novel. Although it's a symbol for immortality and the perils it causes,
it does nothing to show Circe's personal growth - her unique ability to change, which separates
her from the other gods. Let's scratch the conch, I've got something else on my mind.
What I keep going back to is the forest. Listen to some of the prose: it was old growth, gnarled with
oaks and lindens and olive groves, shot through with spearing cyprus. That's where the green scent
came from, drifting up the grassy hillside. The trees shook themselves thickly in the sea winds
and birds darted through the shadows. Even now, I can remember the wonder I felt. All my life
had been spent in the same dim halls or walking the same stunted shore with its threadbare woods.
I was not prepared for such profusion and I felt the sudden urge to throw myself in
like a frog into a pond. I'm imagining the moment when she enters the forest for the
first time and that sense of wonder she feels. It's a turning point in the novel, one that
kick starts her character development. This is the place where Circe develops her witchcraft
which involves coaxing power from flowers and herbs through trial and error. As soon as I can,
I'm placing text into the composition since both text and image need to work together.
We associate different kinds of images with different genres. Science fiction for instance
is easily recognizable for its realistic but surreal images. On the other hand, the broad
category of literary fiction which loosely refers to books that have literary merit is linked with
abstraction, minimalism, and symbolism. Circe is a little difficult to classify;
it has elements of multiple genres in addition to having literary merit. I would like to appeal
to readers who consume both genre and literary fiction, so I'm going to illustrate adventure
but keep the illustration abstract. Instead of drawing a realistic forest,
I'm going to focus on the feeling Circe experiences while she's in the forest.
Beyond anything, what I need this cover to be is bold. The original cover does this quite well. It
depicts Circe as a powerful figure and this lends strength to her legend. My challenge will be to
both represent Miller's gentle prose and the boldness of the narrative. I'm using sweeping,
curved shapes to represent the former, and my character's pose to represent the latter.
She's standing straight against the sweeping diagonals of the background,
holding her ground. The colors I'm using vary between shades of purple and blue.
Blue for the grief that stems from exile, watching loved ones come and go, and purple for the magic.
When I was drawing this cover, I didn't take a lot of inspiration from Greek art or antiquities.
The way I drew her hair was reminiscent of marble, and the flat shapes echo the flat drawings on
Greek vases, but that's pretty much it. The reason why I didn't spend too much time thinking about
this was because I didn't want to feel confined to a certain style. Circe is a name we recognize
and one we already associate with mythology. I don't know if there would be much merit drawing
what people expect to see. Here's something to think about: juxtaposition makes us think.
The disconnect between images makes us consider how they are connected. They make statements,
and stick in our heads. I wouldn't say my cover is completely unexpected, but it's done in a modern,
more feminine style that we typically don't see paired with Greek mythology. In a way,
what i'm trying to do is subvert the audience's expectations because the book
itself is subversive. Circe originally appears in Homer's the Odyssey. In most translations,
she only appears for a couple of pages. We see her through the eyes of Odysseus and his crew.
In miller's novel, it's flipped. This time, it's Odysseus who only appears for a couple chapters
while Circe controls the narrative. She has a life beyond him. The last thing I want to talk
about as we finish the cover is my depiction of Circe. I have always found it difficult to portray
the perfect beauty of gods. I think we all have different perceptions of what divinity looks like.
What's more, our standards of beauty shift over time. I believe this is something Miller
also recognizes. She never really focuses on literal detail. Instead, she uses similes.
Eyes are described as bright as fire, hair like sun on the water. Note how there is the sense
of timelessness and transcendence - words that are beautiful but abstract enough to
accommodate different visualizations of these higher beings. So I decided to keep things as
anonymous as possible. I don't really want to influence how you imagined Circe; I feel
like providing a detailed portrait beforehand would dilute the effect of Miller's writing.
I did take some creative liberties - since she is the daughter of the sun god Helios, her hair
is fire-like. She also appears benevolent, which looks nothing like the typical image of a witch,
and the only facial feature I drew in was her mouth, and if you've read the book, you'll know
why. So, this is my finished cover, however, there is something important I haven't yet considered.
When we go to bookstores, it's the cover we see first but as soon as we pick it up,
it's the entire object we interact with. Book designer Chip Kidd often emphasizes this in
his work. take a look at his cover for Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. It consists of two layers.
They're like puzzle pieces, and only form a complete picture when put together.
It's a book that is best appreciated when it's in your hands and not on a Kindle. His
work encourages me to think about how my design is going to look from all angles. My back cover
and spine are a continuation of the cover illustration. Deep indigo fades into white.
It looks as though the book is undergoing transformation, just as Circe grows into
a sorceress with independence and agency, and just as Miller transforms an age-old narrative
into something contemporary and fresh. Thank you for coming along with me. I hope you enjoyed this
just as much as I enjoyed making this video. If you're interested in Greek mythology or
book design, I've attached some further reading in the description below. These were resources
I discovered during my own research process, and I love them enough to share them with you.