Feb 4, 2013

 

WE NEED NEW NAMES - Noviolet Bulawayo

A brilliant debut novel in which ten-year-old Darling and her shantytown friends Stina, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho and Bastard spend their time playing ‘Find bin Laden’, stealing guavas and smiling photogenically for visiting NGOs. It’s down or out for these kids but, as Darling soon discovers, ‘out’ comes with its own set of problems.’

Noviolet Bulawayo has such an authentic voice it was important to portray this in the cover design. We researched African shop signage and textiles and the title font was drawn from that. The resulting layout allowed for the American part of the novel to be suggested within the design. Painting onto tin helped give the cover that raw energy that was needed, and we commissioned Georgina Potier who explains more below:

“I was lucky enough to come across some old etching plates outside a London Art School, I found these were a perfect distressed surface to create the images using model makers paints. I turned the original guides into reality…the paints were very difficult to work with however - like painting with nail varnish, and I had to use the tiniest paintbrush I could find! BUT I really enjoyed the whole process. It was great fun finding different implements to create the various textures, from cocktail sticks to an old rubber!“

www.georginapotier.com

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