Gregg Kulick on Designing Age of Vice
Gregg Kulick is a book cover designer and a Senior Art Director at Little Brown in NYC. Here he takes us through his process for designer the stunning cover for Age of Vice.
Helen Yentus reached out to me to work on this one in the fall of 2021. She had no specifics for any of the imagery, but really wanted to capture the excitement, action, opulence and grit of the book. It is also a big book for them and there was a lot of excitment in house for it. So the pressure is really there to deliver, especially for someone whom I hold in as high regard as Helen. I never want to disappoint her! The book was absolutely riveting but so sweeping and big, it felt hard to decide what to focus on as an image. When a book like that lands on your desk, and you start to get to work, I sometimes feel like its best to let the type drive the cover.
The first round, I certainly had the bones of where we ended up but just not quite there yet. I tried to keep things vague, but sort of hint at a big epic story. The cover from the first round that I was so in love with, was the cover with a dropped lighter. It conveyed action, violence and it was gold, so it suggested wealth, but a sort of gritty wealth. We went fairly far with that round but the rest of the team just felt we it wasn't big enough. I was so disappointed by that but in hindsight, they were right to have their reluctance with that direction.
Helen had mentioned it might be worth going back and revisiting a previous cover with the type we ended up using, on white with a black cloud. She loved that type but thought it needed something MORE. There was some color variations, but really, it just had to be black and gold. I haven't really considered what I felt that the dripping texture was supposed to represent but I think it sort of hints at a gunshot, at least to me. But that is why I think it works, it is specific enough that people have a general idea of what is within, but abstract enough to not give too much away. It was such a pleasure to work on and it is so exciting to finally see it on the shelves.
Final cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.