Slide 1 of 10,

Four designers discuss their work on recent book covers: first concepts that didn’t make the final cut, and then the cover as published.

Peter Mendelsund on the design for Julio Cortázar’s “Hopscotch” (Pantheon):

“I always knew that I’d be unsatisfied with whatever cover I might design for Julio Cortázar’s jazzy, melancholic, metafictional masterpiece ‘Hopscotch’ (which turns 50 this year). The texts you care about the most are the hardest to design covers for — and I’ve loved ‘Hopscotch’ since I was a teenager.

“ ‘Hopscotch’ is a brilliant narrative experiment, but it is also, ultimately, a love story. So here, I tried the most clichéd thing imaginable — a heart and an arrow. I then set about subverting the cliché in a manner that reflects the author’s topsy-turvy style of storytelling. (The stylistic inspiration here is, appropriately, Latin American book covers of the ’60s.) At the time I designed this comp, I still had several days left before my deadline — so I kept going, making new covers. This one was never shown. Should it have been the final? Perhaps.”