Helen Yentus is a book cover designer and the Art Director of Riverhead Books. Whether they realize it or not, almost every reader in the US has appreciated a Helen Yentus cover design. Helen designed the intricate, all-type cover for the mega-bestseller Eat Pray Love. This cover became so iconic and so intrinsically connected to Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, that it was even adapted as a movie poster and was used in the movie’s marketing campaign. And so, as you can see, almost every adult reader can immediately recall a Helen Yentus design. In a 2018 article with AIGA, Helen said, “I think having been influenced so much by graphic design, I don’t know that I had a chance of being anything else, to be honest.” The daughter of an exhibition designer, she arrived in Brooklyn with her family via the Soviet Union, and was raised on a diet of books about the Constructivists (which Yentus jokingly acknowledges may seem clichéd, given her background) and the Bauhaus. Growing up, she pored over type specimen books, tracing letters until the books were ruined. (Zachary Petite via AIGA)
In 2018, Helen had dozens of her covers displayed as a part of the Be My Cover book cover exhibit at the Strand Bookstore in NYC. She spoke on a panel about book cover design that can be viewed in its entirety here. Helen Yentus is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Before becoming the Art Director of Riverhead, she was as a designer for Penguin and later for the Vintage/Anchor division of Random House.
For further reading, click the following: Publisher’s Weekly Star Watch Profile. Interview with PRH. PRINT Magazine Profile.
