Laywan Kwan on Designing The Missing Treasures of Amy Ashton
Laywan Kwan lives and works as a graphic designer in New York City. Her work has been featured in The Huffington Post, Casual Optimist, Paste Magazine and other publications. Here she takes us through her process for designing The Missing Treasures of Amy Ashton.
Designing the cover for The Missing Treasures of Amy Ashton was actually one of my easier projects. It is a charming story about a woman (Amy Ashton) who hoards multiples of specific items as a way to deal with the grief of her boyfriend who went missing years ago. While Amy is dealing with her past, her present is unfolding and constantly requires her attention: a nosy neighbor, a meddling government worker, and a new neighbor with two young boys who open their hearts and home to her. The story alternates between past and present, giving us glimpses of particular moments where these specific objects became important to her and which she cannot let go of. It becomes clear that these moments/objects are what makes her who she is today, and I wanted the cover to reflect that.
Ironically, I had designed another book cover about hoarding years ago that I have never been able to let go of. The book was originally titled The Hoarder and I wanted the cover to be a jumbled mass of objects where the title fit into the mess. I spent hours researching, collecting, and placing all the objects (and letters) on the page in such a way that they would fit together like a puzzle. This cover was never approved for final, but I wanted the cover for Amy Ashton to work in this way.
Picking the objects and colors was easy because the book was very descriptive about all her objects: aquamarine bottles, terra cotta pots, books, mugs, clocks, etc. The harder part was making the objects each contain a piece of Amy, and also revealing her as a whole when put together. I worked on stacking the objects and the title (the original title was Everything is Beautiful) while simultaneously working on Amy’s silhouette. I wanted to make sure that you could tell that the figure was a woman, and the woman was holding a flower (honeysuckle and gardening is a prevalent theme in the book as well). Once I had the objects stacked, I overlayed her silhouette over the objects, and then fiddled around and adjusted their placements to make everything fit together better, so there was less negative space between objects and so you could see enough of her silhouette.
Even though this was the first comp I designed, I worked on another version where the type was outside of the objects, and then five others which were completely different and photograph-based.
I was never excited about the others but shared them with the team “just in case.” Luckily, the first comp was the one that was approved. However, at some point, the title changed, which changed the composition of the stacking. My art director, Lisa Litwack, and I spent quite a while trying to figure out how to achieve the same balance as the original – which really just required more fiddling around with the placement of objects and type. In the end, the final cover came out to be almost a replica of my original comp.
Final cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.