NaNoWriMo :: NaNoWriMo Blog

"30 Covers, 30 Days" is a brand new project we're tackling this year. Fwis, a New York-based graphic design firm, has been generous enough to offer 30 book cover designs for 30 lucky Wrimos throughout the month of November. You might be one of them!

Fwis has got some amazing book cover designs under its belt. Unsure of how awesome they are? Let me reassure you: they made a dime-store pulp novel cover for The Iliad with "Gore! Glory! Greeks!" splashed across the front. That's some unmitigated awesome.

Chris Papasadero, a founding partner at Fwis took a break from his hectic day of being a design superstar to answer a few questions:

1. If a picture's worth a thousand words, and you're creating 30 covers, you're just 20,000 words shy of winning NaNoWriMo!

If you were banished to a speck in the Pacific Ocean to bash out those remaining 20,000 words, what one thing would you take along to inspire you or keep you motivated? Minus a laptop/typing apparatus, of course.

That's a question I often ask myself just before takeoff. As you can tell from my answer so far, I am actually a very prolific and verbose writer, and when I do write I often keep my pipe and tobacco nearby. It makes me feel very wise and very eccentric, which is as close as I'll get to actually being wise and eccentric. Of course, technically that's TWO objects (pipe & consumable) and we have to assume that there's no real tobacco microclimates on this Pacific speck, so naturally that screws up the pipe angle.

Considering how quickly I could bash out 20,000 words knowing that my pipe was unavailable until I'd finished, I'd probably take along a bottle of very strong alcohol. More like a jug of it, really. A cask, if you will.

2. Are you a visual reader at all? Do you associate color palettes with novel moods, or see certain passages from novels really vividly, or anything like that?

I think everyone does this subconsciously, which is why the movie is never as good as the book.

3. If you could create a book cover for your unwritten autobiography, what would it look like?

See image above.

For more, check out FWIS's website! They've got a rad book cover design appreciation blog, too, where you can indulge in judging books by their covers.

We're stoked!

Tim