Gentlemen’s Club - Designer Interview Part 1
It was nearly two years between my first contact with Alex Camlin and the release of “Gentlemen’s Club,” we jumped on the phone to discuss the process of designing the book.
Alex Camlin is a designer based in Boston, Massachusetts. After working for several years as an in-house art director for various book publishers, he established his own studio specializing in book covers and interiors. Camlin is one of the top designers in books today, his work has appeared in AIGA’s 50 Books/50 Covers competition, Print magazine’s Regional Design Annual, and The New York Book Show.
Chris Buck: Did you do any research of strip club iconography or other visual books of a similar genre?
Alex Camlin: I definitely looked at a lot of signage, ephemera, posters and fliers, whatever I could find. That stuff is helpful to a degree, but, and this is inevitable, there’s a certain vernacular to strip clubs that isn’t going to translate for your book.
It is also my approach, especially in a more commercial setting, to feel the need to enhance the message in some way with typography and other design elements. I’m often asked to style things a certain way to communicate a vibe for whatever theme book the book is exploring.
It was fun to see how we conceptualized Gentlemen’s Club in the beginning, I appreciate your re-sending some of the early design tries.
When I’m looking the early stuff I did for you, some of it to me was almost conversation-starters to see what you would think or say.
Can you give me an example of something that falls into that category?
Early on, I was hung up on the surface stuff: the club atmosphere and stripper style, for lack of a better term. What I was putting in front of you - that was more influenced by what people might expect when they imagine a book about strippers, and I knew was probably going a little hard on that look. I was using a lot of neon and kind of more garish or stylized typography and stuff.
At the time I knew that some of it had maybe too much of a voice, for lack of a better word, or was too stylized. Looking back, and being more familiar with the material in the book, it was never going to work. [Laughs.]
You did a nice pivot there because you talked about how your cover design is often about signaling a certain narrative, or even the marketplace, by using a certain type or a font. You were doing that early on with this project in ways I thought that were effective, but I was trying to create a balance of what I would characterize as “fun versus serious.”
I wanted to indicate to readers that the book was not salacious, and that it was not necessarily “pro-strip club,”” or even “pro-stripper.” My issue with that early LED type was that it seemed to be celebrating that world, and that was a problem for me. Not that I’m necessarily against it…It’s not meant to be a critique but it’s also not celebrating strip club culture.
It was more about an outsider who was interested, but I also want to indicate that the book was a fun experience. It would be entertaining and interesting, and not academic or depressing.
This book feels different than much of the work I’ve seen from you. You are one of the leading cover designers of our time, so I’m curious what your final take on the Gentleman’s Club cover, and the process we had for it.
Interestingly, our first contact was when I licensed one of your photos for a cover of a Robert Pollard biography, the guy who basically is Guided By Voices. In that case my designed altered the image - it’s almost physically cut into the image.
Your portrait of him was more of an element in the design, one of several things that were merged together. I have no problem cutting up, cropping, and altering images; I feel like that’s my stock and trade. In the case of Gentlemen’s Club, I set a ground rule for myself: to preserve whatever image we were using in its original state. I wanted to make it the primary element in the design, with the typography taking a back seat.
At one point you encouraged me to almost start over. In a way, I did, but I still had that voice in my head saying, “Don’t really, because that’s not what this needs.” But you were like, “Maybe the type can go on its side.” You gave me some license to sort of explore having more interplay between type and image at that later point.
I felt like there might be an area that we hadn’t explored. It’s tough having open-ended conversations about cover direction when you know where my biases and interests are. I wanted to release you from them.
I was trying to take myself out as the client for you. You’re being reasonably sensitive to the fact that I’m the author and the client, which in fact is a big burden.
Most people want you coming in the door at a certain level and then from there they’ll tell you everything they don’t like. If I get a round of comps rejected, the message I’m getting is, “Don’t come back here with that mess. Don’t bring anything you’ve shown already, we want all new stuff.”
That’s not what you were saying. You were conscious of the fact that we had done this process of elimination. We said, “This, not this. This, not this,” until it funnels down and we were at a point where it was worth opening it up again.
It’s sort of what I was saying about all those early covers that we looked at. I call them “conversation-starters,” and all of that is worth something, but it doesn’t always get you to where you need to be.
That’s the nature of what I do anyway. Designers love to show you all their rejected ideas, oftentimes they’re great to see, but there’s usually a good reason why that didn’t end up being the one.
There was a confidence I had around Gentlemen’s Club that we didn’t need to do that to make it appealing. I didn’t need to have the title in strip club lights, or a neon sign, to make it work.
What’s interesting to me is towards the end we came back to use this neon kind of pink / purple color for the cover lettering, which is fairly reserved in form, despite running vertically. I was really satisfied by that because it struck the right balance.
You told me that you had shown it to someone, and they said, “It’s a stripper pole!” That line of type running over Vincent. Up until that moment that hadn’t even occurred to me. The idea that someone would see it like that when they looked at it, meant that it was working on a more fundamental level.
Vincent is sort of reaching around it for the fist bump. It forces you to look at the expression on his face. It’s like cropping the image without cropping it. I was like, “If somebody is seeing a stripper pole, they’re not going to be the only one.”
At some point I was like, “What if the cover was the image of a matchbook and it said, ‘Gentlemen’s Club’ on it?”
But it’s a book being put out by a photographer! To not have a prominent and one of the best pictures on the cover would be foolish beyond acceptability. It’s a funny point but I think could be confusing.
I’m always conflicted by this because, ironically, when I’ve done promotional pieces none of them have my photo on the cover. I can’t think of any of my commercial promos that have a picture on the cover. It’s always an illustration or a type treatment. It’s almost like I’m trying to make my promotions more like an art piece, whereas my published books align as commercial products.
I think it’s the audience, too. Your promo pieces are going to people who understand the concept.
I’m not sure that my book audience is that different. I think it’s that the promo piece is, by its nature, commercial. So trying to elevate it to being something more nuanced, I’m trying to create some kind of balance.
It’s designed to invite you to hire me. Whereas the book is more self-evidently not commercial, in a weird way. It’s not selling anything, in addition to itself. So, by putting the picture on the cover, in a way, it’s a more natural fit.
Perhaps at some point I’ll republish all my books without pictures on the cover, as that’s still my taste.
It’s fascinating that you do covers, and it’s probably the reason why I respect you so much. Now that I’ve published a few books, I look at the ones I own myself, even the ones that I love, and over half the time, I’m like, “This is a pretty suck-ass cover considering how great this photographer is.”
You sound like me looking at my own work. [Laughs.]
It’s so hard. People load so much significance into a cover, and that often is the road to ruin. If you’re too analytical, it’s almost like paint by number, with a list of “must-have” ingredients, and all the, “Do this and not that,” there ends up being no Gestalt to it.
Read Part 2 here.
Top Image: Cover try with Zach of New York (photographed alongside the Williamsburg Bridge in Manhattan). Not only was this cover not used, the photo itself was cut from the final version of the book.
Bottom Image: A composite of strip club reference material, as design and lettering inspiration.