‘A book cover works like a synopsis, it sums up the story," says Georgianne Margaretta.

Yes, People Do Judge a Book By Its Cover

While most bookworms can quickly recall passages from their favorite books, it’s not often that they can explain what caught their eye and tempted them to reach up and pluck the book off the shelf in the first place.

It is Georgianne Margaretta’s and Maryna Roesdy’s job to get readers to grab a book off the shelf — to stop them in their tracks, to tempt the reader with a bit of eye candy. These two women — who were willing to share their story, but not their ages — eloquently blend imagination and interpretation into some of the country’s most intriguing illustrations and book covers.

“A book cover works like a synopsis, it sums up the entire story with pictures, colors and words,” Georgianne says . Georgianne is a graphic designer at Gramedia Pustaka Utama, one of the country’s biggest publishers. The cover illustration for the Indonesian chick-lit smash “I Beg Your Prada,” by Alexandra Dewi and Cynthia Agustina, published in 2006, is one of Georgianne’s favorite covers.

For her, inspiration can come in any form and from any direction. “One time, I was assigned to do a book cover for a self-help book for teenagers and I was experiencing writer’s block,” she says. “I ended up looking at every single thing in my bedroom.” Then her eyes fell on the pattern of her comforter.

“Luckily they approved it,” she says.

Georgianne started designing book covers in 2002. Before that, she worked as a promotional design assistant at a publishing house. One day, the editorial section needed someone to do cover illustrations and she took on the challenge.

Even after she resigned from the publishing house in 2005 to pursue a postgraduate degree in Australia at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, majoring in communications, she was still receiving requests from Indonesia for her cover designs. After she graduated in 2006, the requests continued to pour in and eventually she began to receive orders to lay out entire novels instead of simply the covers.

Book cover illustrators not only have to be creative and imaginative, they also have to be able to adapt to the needs of the author, publisher and, sometimes more important, the book editor.

According to Maryna Roesdy, editors play a big role in deciding the concept for the cover. Maryna is a well-known graphic designer specializing in book cover illustration. Her designs range from fiction and children’s books to magazines and product packaging. Her first assignment was to design the cover for the local version of “Bridget Jones’ Diary” in 2004 for Gramedia Publishing.

“Usually, they direct us by providing a synopsis, and also with some additional feedback from the author [if it is an Indonesian book],” Maryna says, adding that it usually takes a week or two to finish the draft.

When editors don’t provide a synopsis, Maryna tends to let her imagination take control. “I usually try to draw illustrations based on my interpretation of the story,” she says. Currently, Maryna stays busy doing illustrations for the teen magazine Gadis (Girls), owned by the Femina Group.

Georgianne and Maryna both say that designing book covers can be exhausting work but is always rewarding.

When Yohan Handoyo, the wine director at Decanter in Kuningan, South Jakarta, won an international competition for culinary books in 2008 for his book “Rahasia Wine” (“Wine Secrets”), it was Georgianne who designed the layout and did the cover work. The book was named the best wine education book in the world and given the Gourmand Cookbook Award.

“My editor told me that one of the elements of the book that contributed most to winning the award was the design itself,” Georgianne says. “Supposedly, the judges didn’t understand the Indonesian language and we didn’t provide them with a translation, so it must have been the layout.”

Whatever the truth of that claim, Georgianne is just proud that her design helped “Rahasia Wine” beat out 107 other entries for the award.

“I don’t care if what the editor said was true or not, I’m just happy that the book got an award,” she says.

Maryna has her own career highlight. It was when she was working as a graphic designer in a non-publishing company and pitched a cover design for a book by Asma Nadia, one of Indonesia’s most-celebrated authors who has published 33 books with more than a million copies distributed nationwide.

“I forget the title of Asma’s book, but at that time, I thought there was nothing to lose by sending her my draft of the cover,” Maryna says.

When the author received her design, she replied to Maryna’s e-mail, saying she was satisfied with the design. The experience was a boost to Maryna’s confidence and led her to become a full-time book cover illustrator.

Whenever Maryna is feeling down or struggling with a job, she makes a sketch for an illustration or looks back at some of her published cover designs. “It improves my mood and gives me a feeling of joy,” she says.

For designers like Georgianne and Maryna the proof is in the packaging. Though most readers might never think about the amount of work that goes into creating a book cover, Maryna puts her heart and soul into every design she creates.

“God works in a lot of ways and through a lot of people, even when we think we are not doing anything big,” she says.

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