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1. Visually take us through your professional journey. Create a diagram that summarizes your career to date.

2. When did you realize you wanted to become a book cover designer? Did you stumble into this career or did you intentionally pursue it?

Jason Arias: Like most designers, I enjoy designing books because of a love for reading. Two childhood experiences standout…

Learning how to read along with Teddy Ruxpin, while he narrated his airship adventures, put some of the first wrinkles in my smooth brain.

A few years later, I started reading books with a flashlight in a sleeping bag in my bedroom closet (likely inspired by Calvin and Hobbes). My brain forgets plots almost immediately, but the emotions the story elicits always stick. I distinctly remember reading Call of the Wild this way. The complex stir of awe, terror, and adoration for ThE GrEaT OuTDoOrs while reading that book was pretty intoxicating.

Then there were a couple aesthetic experiences related to reading that became influential…

While reading Jurassic Park, I imprinted on Chip Kidd’s cover and got swept up in that whole zeitgeist. Around the same time, my dad remodeled my family’s home. He and my mom exclusively decorated it in either black or white furnishings. It’s charmingly odd to me now, but back then it was my normal, so years later, when a friend joked that I “lived in a piano” I was like, “Huh…” and started to see how that shaped my design preferences.

Many years later I became aware of book cover design as a profession when I read Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, which was designed by Rodrigo Corral. Bob Larkin’s medical illustration of a guy with his skin removed was so bluntly visceral. It felt like a perfect match for the writing. I knew nothing about design at the time, but as I started reading more of Palahniuk’s early books, all designed by Rodrigo Corral, I could feel the designer having fun making them, which was alluring and especially poignant for me at the time, because I was studying computer science and having zero fun.

Six years later I went back to school for design and had the privilege of studying and interning with Paul Sahre, followed by a stint with Oliver Munday a few years after that. Their approach to design and the atmosphere of their studios were a huge influence.

3. If you HAD to devote one day per week to a side hustle or creative pursuit, describe how you would spend that day.

Jason Arias: In 2012 I went to an exhibit at MADMuseum called The Art of Scent 1889-2012, curated by Chandler Burr. It was an all-white room with shallow indentations in the wall. You stick your head in and a faint puff filled your nose with a scent. Each indentation in the wall occupied a different year and a different art movement. Learning that perfumers moved away from representation into abstraction at the same time as other fine artists, and the realization that I had virtually no vocabulary for my own sense of smell has stuck with me since. All this to say, our sense of smell and the olfactory arts fascinate me. I’d have fun spending one day a week experimenting with perfumery.

4. Based on experience, what city stands out to you as the most inspiring place to visit if you are an artist?

5. If you couldn’t design book covers for a living (or hold any job in the creative field), what’s another career that you think you would’ve excelled in or have wanted to try?

Jason Arias: During the pandemic I started climbing trees in Prospect Park. It got me into a flow state reconnecting with a childhood joy and provided some much needed copium.

Around the same time, Vincent James at Timber Press hired me to design a 350-page illustrated interior celebrating the landscape design of Frederick Law Olmsted, who was one of the designers of Prospect Park. It was a special project for me, because there was a clear overlap between this personally meaningful hobby and my work as a designer.

I climbed trees nearly every weekend for a year, so I got to see them change over multiple seasons. I removed dead branches, saw birds build nests, and sometimes checked on their eggs. It was one of the more peaceful experiences I’ve had, so I think I would love the work of an arborist.

6. What’s your ideal auditory environment while working?  

Jason Arias: Mostly instrumental music. If I want to feel receptive my go-to’s are Rival Consoles, Kiasmos, and El Buho. If I want to feel assertive, then its Animals as Leaders and Night Verses. When I have a stretch of mindless tasks I sign into YouTube University and swan dive into some rabbit hole.

7. Tell me about an embarrassing moment at work or a big mistake you made. We’ve all been there.

Jason Arias: While interning, one of my first assignments was for an editorial illustration to accompany a book review. It was for a debut novel with a fun prompt:

something conceptual and graphic that conveys the psychological, mind-bending quality of the plot. Love and murder, marriage and infidelity. With peanuts!!!!

I did a bunch of image research and noticed that pre-existing art looked similar to the book cover, so I wanted to do something different. While brainstorming I came up with the idea of an ultrasound, but instead of a baby it’d be a peanut:

I was so chuffed working on this thing I could barely sleep the night before it printed. The next morning I opened the paper to see another artist’s illustration. I was crushed.

This is pretty embarrassing, but like a total newb, I emailed the art director asking what happened. When I didn’t hear back after a few hours I looked up the author and emailed his representation sharing my excitement for the assignment, along with the illustration, and asked for their opinion. The author actually replied to me directly with a kind message, which I promptly shared with Paul. He then politely schooled me on this chain of bad decisions.

The art director even apologized and shared that the editor was pregnant. So naturally, the illustration freaked her out, which is why it was cut at the final hour. OOF.

8. Spread good design. Who is one (non-book-cover) graphic designer or artist that we should check out? 

Jason Arias: Jonathan Harris’ In Fragments. I’d bastardize it by trying to describe it in my own words. I just know there’s a ton of stuff to dig into and be inspired by.

Yousuf Mohammed Ali Madappan of Gold Souq in Dubai. This man can recreate any fragrance he smells on the spot. This truly blows my mind, a real life superpower. And the fact that he refuses to be snatched up by a monolith like LVMH for an unfathomable salary. He’s doing what he loves on his own terms.

And I have to include, in my opinion, the greatest living guitarist—Tosin Abasi.

9. Name one author you would love to design for before you retire.

Jason Arias: Robin Sloan.

10. The INABC Exit Question. You’re at a party and you just told a stranger that you’re a book cover designer. What’s the most common response you get from people when they hear this? 

Jason Arias: “Do you want to borrow some money . . . ?”

For more Q&As from our pool of talented designers, explore the 10 Questions series page.
Special thanks to Amanda Hudson for creating the series’ blog post cover design.