HarperCollins Publishers Award for Best Cover 2021
Finalist
Cover Designer: Christine Ling, Huia Publishers
Title: The Liminal Space
Publisher: Huia Publishers
Format: 180 x 110mm, 224pp plus 4pp cover, paperback, section sewn. We’ve used a silver holographic foil to make up most of the cover, exploring the meaning of liminal. With its constantly shifting colours, it underpins ‘liminal’ as a place of transition, a place where all transformations happen.
Combining this with our main character William’s synaesthesia, the holographic foil was the perfect showcase of the main beats of the story. The illustrated foil riffs on English vintage cottage wallpapers. The design consists of a filigree-like pattern that encompasses a wraparound cover with specific elements and flowers that represent the main characters – showing how they are intertwined and connected to one another, their lives overlapping with one another’s.
Typography: Title: Adobe Caslon Pro, Bold 42pt
Back cover blurb: Adobe Caslon Pro, Regular, 10pt/12.5pt
To achieve balance in the cover, the masthead font needed to be pared back,
convey English quaintness and not be overpowering to the design of the graphics
around it. The roundness and thickness of the serifs needed to closely mirror the
ends of the foil pattern, which in turn was dictated by the limits of the print method.
Judges’ comments A serene, attractive cover that plays with more subtle luminescent qualities of light through intricate silver foiling and gradients of ink.
