Aiming high

She joined Faber in April 2005 in the new position of art director, and has been slowly returning Faber’s design inhouse ever since. Chief executive Stephen Page started making changes when he joined four years ago, ending Faber’s contract with Pentagram to work with freelance designers. He ditched Faber’s classical boxed jackets in favour of a book-by-book approach.
Payne herself was working on a freelance basis for Faber when she was offered the job. "Although we were getting some great jackets I felt that editors, authors and sales would benefit from talking to a design director about jackets and having an inhouse design team."
So she hired Darren Wall from Simon & Schuster as senior designer last December; Shona Andrew became studio manager; and Yeti McCaldin is about to join as a designer from Bloomsbury.
The "buzz" of working inhouse is important to Payne: "It’s about being involved in the whole publishing process. The buzz surrounding a big acquisition is inspiring for a designer."
Payne plucks out Clear Water by Will Ashon: the dust jacket is covered with small holes that partially reveal a picture of a smiling woman. She tells me that all designers work in different ways--all far too creative to conform, one assumes--but she "tends to try and put together four or five jacket ideas, all completely different. Some can be wild and then I’ll calm down and be more sensible." With Clear Water, visiting the printer led to recriminations: "Oh, you’re the one with the bloody jacket with all the holes."
When she’s working on a book, she tends to read as much as she can ("not all designers will read the manuscript"), talk to editors, and even talk to authors ("sometimes they come up with brilliant ideas and are really helpful, sometimes not so, but we do take them seriously").
She isn’t scared to take risks, and never works to a constrictive brief. "Nobody says: ’Make it like this’, which is often what other publishers do. I want something new, to aim higher."
The inspiration for a recent jacket, Andrew O’Hagan’s Be Near Me, came from the author. "The setting for the book is a Scottish coastal town; it’s a story of art and politics, love and change. We agreed that the seagulls were a good metaphor for the themes contained in the book."
Rachel Cusk’s latest, Arlington Park, saw senior designer Darren Wall dispensing with the brief in order to chat things through with editor Hannah Griffiths. "The story goes that after an hour he stood up and said: ’It has to be a dead bird!’ And that was it."
She and marketing director Noel Murphy have been discussing how to take the Faber brand forwards. "My aim is for the jackets to be as consistently exceptional as our publishing is. Even though I’m happy with how they look at the moment, my work isn’t done--I’m aiming much higher."
Always creative--as an only child, "a big stack of paper and crayons were my friends"--Payne is adamant about the importance of strong cover design. "A good cover intrigues people enough to make them pick up a book, turn it over, read the back cover, and make the final decision to buy. It gets a book into people’s hands, encourages them to invest further."