Henk van het Nederend is a graphic designer with Moker Ontwerp, a branding and design studio based in Amsterdam. Founded in 2008, the studio is known for its striking book cover designs, which often feature Retype fonts. Yves Peters interviewed Henk for us.

How did you get into book cover design?

As a studio, Moker Ontwerp basically designs everything. Somehow we showed up on the radar of publishing houses that found our visual output interesting. Over the period of a year or so, around 2012–2013, many of them contacted us about commissioning book covers. Suddenly we found ourselves working for some of the larger publishers in the Netherlands, like De Bezige Bij, Nijgh & Van Ditmar, and Prometheus. From then on, book covers became an important part of our output. That has remained the case to this day.

So it wasn’t from discovering your portfolio website or through word of mouth?

No, they came to us because they’d seen our work here and there. Some publishers specifically mentioned our magazine covers for the VPRO Gids. We designed many of those when Piet Schreuders was their art director. We have an excellent relationship with him. Do you know Piet?

He’s one of my design heroes. His book Lay In Lay Out had a major impact on my design thinking.

Okay, so the VPRO Gids magazine covers attracted many eyeballs. We aimed to develop a strong, powerful visual idea for each one. And it’s a small step from a magazine cover to a book cover, since they’re comparable.

You often choose Retype typefaces. What attracts you to them and makes you select their fonts for your cover designs?

I believe the first Retype face I used was Kurversbrug. It has become somewhat cliché, but if your book is about anything Amsterdam, you use Kurversbrug. We’re not the only ones, mind you. It’s a beautiful typeface, and it truly is Amsterdam.

Furthermore, I have become a fan of their revivals. Guyot and Dejanire, for example, have lots of character. Retype faces are beautiful. They work great as text fonts but also look incredible in large sizes since they have many exciting details. That’s what makes designing with Retype fonts so much fun.

You mentioned text fonts – do you also do book design?

We have designed entire books, too, but that’s less common. Usually, it’s only the cover, although sometimes, the author explicitly requests that we take care of the interiors. We also did a few cookbooks, including the inside pages, but we’re not hardcore. Typesetting body copy for books happens even less.

How important is the choice of a typeface when designing a book cover?

It involves quite a bit of research. Every designer has several typefaces in their head as a starting point. What works and what doesn’t? Book covers, however, have unwritten rules by genre. That’s very noticeable with thrillers, for example. They often sport forceful, condensed sans serifs. And young adult novels typically have handwritten titles or feature type designs with a fantasy feel. The typography tells the audience what to expect and what kind of book they’re about to read. As a designer, you’re somewhat bound to these conventions. You won’t choose playful, fun letters for a suspenseful thriller; you’re gently nudged in the right direction by the literary genre. The literary world can be rather conservative when it comes to visual language, so you have to conform to specific rules for the genre’s recognizability.

Speaking of “conservative,” a gradual shift has occurred where we see book covers less as physical objects in brick-and-mortar bookshops and more as tiny thumbnails on digital screens. Does this inform your approach to cover design?

For me, personally, yes. I’ve always been a big supporter of straightforward designs. As people walk through a bookshop or browse online, they’re confronted with countless book covers. Having a clear, simple book cover helps, as it will stand out in that sea of visual input. This mindset has often been our modus operandi. As designers, we’re not exactly subtle, but we’re still classic and tasteful. We have become known for making a splash and creating eye-popping book covers. That’s what we aim for.

Quick aside: for fifteen years, I wrote an online article series discussing movie posters…

I know; I was a big fan.

…and this codified typographic language is very similar to my findings. Movie marketing is also quite conservative because it helps sell movies to the audience more efficiently. So, the parallels are funny but not at all surprising in hindsight.

What new projects do you have in the pipeline? Are there any typefaces you’re looking forward to designing with?

There’s an upcoming new book by Joris van Casteren where Retype’s Kranto turned out to be a perfect match. I used it really big. And even though, as designers, we always have a shortlist of fonts in our heads that work well with specific genres, we are considering a few new typefaces. Retype always has excellent designs, so we keep an eye on the latest releases. Regularly, we see a new release being advertised and think: “That would be a fun one to try out.”

To return to Kurversbrug, you can’t use that font just anywhere. It needs something particular. The same goes for Medusa. It is a masterful script font, but you have to find the perfect application.

Does your approach to book covers trickle through to your other design work? Have you gained specific insights that you can apply in different areas of design?

Not necessarily. It’s more of a general approach to graphic design. Are there specific strategies that you can apply to different areas of design? If a general concept works well as a book cover, it will also work as a poster or logo. Now that book covers are presented so small in digital sales environments, they almost become logos. The underlying concept needs to be clear.

We love it when the audience manages to make the connection with a conceptual element in the design. For example, we designed the cover and dust jacket for Ramsey Nasr’s De fundamenten (The Foundations). We stacked the letters as if they were a building. When you remove the dust jacket and discover the actual cover, the letters are in a jumbled pile, as if the building collapsed. Readers found that really cool: they connected the dots and understood the joke. But not all publishers go along with visual games like these. They often just want a striking image with beautiful letters, nothing fancy.

Do you have similar successful examples you can think of where you played tricks on the reader’s subconscious?

The first one that comes to mind is the cover for Ronald Giphart’s Nachtangst (Night Terrors). It’s a highly minimal design, and it was pretty ballsy for the publisher to go along with it. The cover consists of nothing but windows: a 4 × 5 grid of gray rectangles except for one yellow one, as if it has a light behind it. Many people liked this design and started referring to it as our Dick Bruna cover. They found it a brilliant wink at his work. Except, that was never our intention. The audience added their personal interpretation, which made the design lead its own life. These are surprising occurrences because you never know how a cover will be received and if it will be successful.

Can you predict what the publisher will like, though? Or do you prefer to try something new and see if they catch on?

Only sometimes. We usually get a brief outlining the desired atmosphere, if they want a purely typographic design or a design with an added illustration, and so on. But as a designer, you may have ideas they hadn’t thought of. Publishers often like to be surprised and appreciate it when you propose something unexpected. Then it suddenly seems to be acceptable. So it is fun to at least try.

Even though publishers tend to be somewhat conservative, they can be receptive to innovative ideas?

Definitely. There will be people who are prepared to think along with you. They want the best for you, and also for the author, while still keeping the book’s marketability in mind. You can always propose new ideas.

Do you have any advice for young designers trying to break into the field?

Look, there’s an insane amount of graphic designers, and hundreds of new ones graduate each year. This makes it quite challenging to make a mark in the book cover business. As in so many other fields, publishers have these, let’s call them Rolodexes – lists of people with whom they usually collaborate and feel comfortable with. You can’t just start working in the field; you have to really want it. My advice would be to be prepared to put in the work. Just like with movie posters, create as many different options as possible. If you only have one idea and it gets rejected, it’s easy to get discouraged, so make sure to have several more designs to put forward. Be professional: if one approach doesn’t work, try coming at it from another angle. That’s something many beginning designers grapple with. Don’t assume your one idea is brilliant and leave it at that; that’s seldom the case, unfortunately. And be prepared for the possibility that a lesser design is selected that isn’t your favorite. But that comes with the territory.

Interview: Yves Peters
Edition: Caren Litherland