Cover story: Always Italicise: how to write while colonised
Author:
Alice Te Punga Somerville
Publisher:
Auckland University Press
ISBN:
9781869409760
Date Published:
08 September 2022
Pages:
88
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$24.99
We’re all told not to judge a book by the cover – but we do. It’s the book’s main selling-point, especially if we know nothing about the author and/or haven’t sought out the title based on a review.
Completely unscientifically and from a book buyer’s point-of-view, rather than a designer’s well- honed eye, each month Kete judges books by their covers to come up with one we deem to be the most alluring. Partly because it provides an opportunity to hear from the sometimes-unsung heroes of the literary world: the designers.
Our September pick is Always Italicise: how to write while colonised? by Alice Te Punga Somerville with a cover designed by Neil Pardington. It’s simple, streamlined even, and yet packed with detail and subtle allusions to past and present.
Neil Pardington on designing the cover:
How did you come to design this cover?
I design a lot of books and book covers for Auckland University Press, so I’m often asked to take on a project out of the blue. I whakapapa to Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe and Ngāti Kahungunu and specialise in the design of books by or about Māori – so I’m offered a lot of projects that have a Māori focus.
What is it that you like about this kind of imagery, which matches eye-catching typography with graphic design?
I wanted this particular design to have a strong sense of te ao Māori. The pattern is based on a traditional kōwhaiwhai design – ‘Puhoro’ – meaning stormy, tempestuous. Kōwhaiwhai is traditionally seen on the heke (rafters) of a wharenui – so long and thin. For Always Italicise I altered and repeated the design to fill the cover. Experimentation and invention are part of the kōwhaiwhai design tradition, so this is something old, something new.
I’m a bit of a collector of typefaces – usually buying them on a feeling that I may use them in the future. The title font ‘Wonder’ is one such typeface, so it was nice to find a project that was the right fit for it. The visual counterpoint of a grungy typewriter-style font came from Alice’s request to have the cover represent the act of writing. These typefaces, together with the kōwhaiwhai, create eye-catching mismatches – perhaps an apt visual representation of Alice’s writing.
What was the process for bringing it all together? Did you read Alice’s text first and did that have any influence?
Book cover design is really a three-way conversation between the publisher, author and designer. I was sent a draft copy of the book along with a design brief from AUP and some directions from the author. The poem’s narratives on social and political situations in postcolonial Aotearoa provided the irreverent angle for the design. I explored the directions suggested in the brief and some other ideas of based on my ongoing design practice. Alice had suggested and image of a typewriter and/or type-written pages. In the end we decided to combine elements from two design directions to create some visual friction, which I think really works.
What other book covers, or art works, inspired you or fed into the creation of this cover? What lead you to choose the colours that you did?
Traditional kowhaiwhai design seen in many wharenui and books over the years. Seeking advice from other Kāi Tahu artists – both traditional and contemporary as part of my practice. Roger Neich’s book Painted Histories has been a key resource for my design practice for the past 20 years. I had worked with the puhoro kōwhaiwhai design previously, so it immediately came to mind. Shane Cotton’s paintings are always a great reference when bringing Māori traditions together with contemporary typography.
The design is visually busy, so the colours were kept to a minimum. Black, white and red reflect traditional pigments used for kōwhaiwhai. The red ochre pigment kōkōwai is made from iron-rich clay (tākou) mixed with shark oil. This blood-coloured pigment symbolises the origin of the world through the separation of Ranginui and Papatūānuku by their children. Black pigment was obtained by burning kauri gum or resinous wood. In contrast to that direction, the tan bands behind the type mimic kraft paper and manilla folders in a kind of research and writing and publishing tradition.
We're told that we should never judge a book by its cover but we all do. Is there a book that you've bought or picked up to read because of the cover?
If it’s an art or design book you probably can judge it by the cover! So, a lot of those books over the years. Two titles that I definitely grabbed from the shelves without knowing anything about them were Zone: Fragments For a History of the Human Body and Blasted Allegories: an Anthology of Writings by Contemporary Artists.
Alice Te Punga Somerville on the cover of Always Italicise: how to write while colonised
The cover is so gorgeous but also meaningful. When I was working on the book I had in mind a cover with a typewriter on it - I guess because I felt that I was writing back to colonial conventions etc - but when I saw this design, I realised the book was much more profoundly, or maybe centrally, about continuity (of Te Ao Māori, of Māori aesthetic forms, of who we are) than it is about writing back. The typewriter is still there, in the font of the writing on the cover, but the foundation of the book is much bigger and deeper (and more beautiful) than that. The artist also explained why this particular kōwhaiwhai pattern and for me that added another layer of meaning. I also like how the colours and design of the title make the book look like a manual - a field guide. A ‘how to’ not just a ‘boo hoo' - which is what it is (I hope)!
