So how did we get the awesome cover we have for Who is the Doctor? An excellent question. Let’s see if I can break it down.
First of all, Robert and myself suggested to ECW that they use Natalie Racz as the designer. I really loved the covers she did for the Doctor Who fanzine Enlightenment (which she did while I was editor) and I had seen some of her samples she had done at Humber college and thought she was talented. So the first hurdle was getting ECW to go for her, which they did.
Then last June, before we had even submitted the final manuscript, ECW’s Art Director, Rachel, e-mailed us to find out what ideas we had. We were instructed that we couldn’t use copyrighted images (if we used a photograph it would have to be non-BBC, rather like how the Telos paperbacks use paparazzi photos of the actors out of costume), so we had to work with that restriction.
Because I have worked as a communications professional for 15 years, I’ve worked with lots of designers, and I’ve done some amateur graphic design work myself. And I had plenty of ideas. So we gave them my doodles.
Idea number 1 was the one I liked the most: a photo cover that featured the costumes of the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. (I figured, they’re just clothes in a closet; there can’t be copyright issues). It would require a kick ass type treatment to make it work, but I thought it could. Here’s my doodle:
Idea number 2 was the one Robert liked the most: A sihloutte of a generic Doctor running forward with the TARDIS behind him. The background was one of those funky sunburst halos like on the Scott Pilgrim books. I was inspired by the cover of ECW’s own book about Mad Men, Kings of Madison Avenue, which uses the cut-up sihlouette of Don Draper from the opening credits to great effect.
(Although I didn’t articulate this in my brief, what was in the back of my mind was something kind of retro-ish, that looked like the title cards of Irwin Allen series like Land of the Giants or The Invaders.)
Idea number 3 neither of us liked but thought we should have 3 ideas to choose from. That involved making an identikit face using photos of the three actors (Eccleston, Tennant, Smith). I saw this as an inventive way to use paparazzi photos of the actors, though it had the downside of making someone unrecognizable on the front cover!
Robert and a designer he knew in Australia cooked up another idea using the words “Who is the Doctor” to make up the form of the TARDIS as well.
Rachel came back to us and indicated the preferred option was #2, and so Natalie was set to work on it. Here’s an early doodle from Natalie indicating where the type would go:
At some point Natalie (or Rachel or someone else) suggested using Matt Smith’s eleventh Doctor as the sihlouette. We were fine with this as he is the current Doctor.
Eventually came the first stab at a cover by Natalie:
Which we more or less loved. We just had a few tweaks in terms of moving the subtitle so it didn’t amputate the Doctor’s leg, and elongating and foreshortening the Doctor’s arms so it looked as though the Doctor was running forward (as opposed to what we all called “the Judd Nelson Breakfast Club stance”). Because I’m a visual guy, I showed how these tweaks could be made in photoshop:
Robert and his Australian designer friend suggested some font changes just to make it look fresher. We breathed easy. We were some minor tweaks away from the finish line…
And then…
Our editor Jen called me a couple of weeks later. (By now it was late July and we were editing the book). Potential book covers are reviewed by booksellers for feedback, and the feedback wasn’t good. It was felt Matt Smith’s Doctor shouldn’t be on there alone and that the other New Series Doctors should be there too. (A week or too later I had cause to seethe when they released a promo image for Series 6b with Matt Smith now wearing a trenchcoat. If we had stuck with the “generic Doctor in great coat” idea it really could have been any of them!) They weren’t wild about the font and wanted something more “Doctor Who” like. So the existing cover design was scrapped. Having covers nixed by the booksellers at this stage is apparently a common occurence so I was told not to take it personally.
But I was asked if I had any ideas that could salvage what was there but also using the other Doctors. So I got on to Photoshop and I doodled. And with some rough-and-ready sihlouetting of Tennant and Eccleston using various photographs I came up with this in a couple of hours:
ECW’s art director Rachel liked it a lot, though she wondered if we could lose the TARDIS now as it was a bit cluttered (which I didn’t oppose). She also sent me a screencap of the time vortex from the opening credits and wondered if we could use that as a background, so I obliged her using a blowup of the screencap.
A few weeks later we got back Natalie’s version, which realized everything beautifully with her own take on it. With some minor tweaking (mostly the size of the title. Natalie in the meantime found a “Doctor Who font”—Assiduous, once the main font for Doctor Who brand during the late ‘90s, and still being used on the Classic Doctor Who DVD range!) And this is what we have. I’ve taken to calling it, affectionately, the “Charlie’s Angels” cover. Here it is in its final form, complete with highlight from our Neil Gaiman back cover blurb:
It’s even better when you see the book for real!
I was a little more on my A game, or probably my B game, when Robert and I were interviewed on Radio Free Skaro, the world’s most popular Doctor Who podcast. Robert and I were interviewed at Gallifrey (the RFS gang, Steven, Warren and Chris had been given an advance copy of the book) and we were able to talk about our hopes for the book, how we wrote it, our differing approaches and more. It’s always a delight to be interviewed by Steven, Warren and Chris and Radio Free Skaro is my favourite podcast precisely for the freewheeling but thoughtful environment the three of them create, and that extends to the way they conduct interviews. Go listen to it!
