JAMES HUTCHESON
“Kindles and e-books are here, but most people still love a real book…”
Gill Sherry
Never judge a book by its cover.
I’m inclined to agree from a metaphorical point of view but certainly not in the literal sense.
Is it not the cover that attracts us to a book in the first place? Authors will tell you that it’s important to hook a reader from the very first page, but I would argue that the cover does that before they’ve even opened the book.
I’d like to think James Hutcheson agrees with me. He does design book covers, after all.
Born in Prestwick, James attended Alloway Primary School and Ayr Academy before heading south to Carlisle and Leeds to continue his art training. At school, he’d been involved with the school magazine and knew that his future was in art. That said, he very nearly followed a different path.
“I came up to Edinburgh to go to teacher training college at Moray House. Earlier that month, I’d got to know Stephanie Wolfe Murray at Canongate Books. She was a close friend of Lady Antonia Fraser and was going to publish a collection of Scottish love poems collected by Antonia. She said, ‘Would you like to do the drawings for it?’”
The job was worth £150 – a lot of money back in 1974 – so James dropped out of Moray House and accepted Stephanie’s offer. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone dropping out of university after only one day!
“It was half a day actually. I never signed the register!”
We both laugh at his audaciousness but as he correctly points out, he could have gone back had the design job not worked out.
“It was luck,” he says of the contract with Canongate. “It’s probably harder for young illustrators nowadays. Publishing was a different beast back then.”
Following that initial job, he went on to specialise in book cover design and later became Art Director at Canongate, a role he held for many years. There must have been some pretty memorable covers during that time?
“We published Life of Pi by Jan Martell, and Alasdair Gray’s Lanark before that… in fact, a lot of books with Alasdair. It was good fun.”
I’m curious to know if cover designers actually read the books beforehand.
“Initially you did, but nowadays you get a rough synopsis and that’s about it. The whole enterprise nowadays is much more marketing led. If one publisher sees another book being very successful, they might want their cover to be similar.”
Understandable, I suppose.
“And compared to other areas of design,” he continues, “it doesn’t have the same budget. I think you’ve got to be a bit of a bibliophile.”
Does he have a favourite book out of the many he has designed?
“One for Birlinn… we were producing various antique cartographic books. I worked on one called The Great Map, which we published in conjunction with the British Museum. I designed and assembled the book and that’s my favourite. To publish something like that in Scotland as opposed to it being produced by an outfit in London, was quite a coup.”
In addition to book covers, James also did a lot of work for the music industry, designing album sleeves.
“The one I was most excited about was The Incredible String Band. That was the only Scottish band that played at Woodstock. They were cited by Bob Dylan, The Beatles and Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin as having an influence of them!”
The album was called Seasons They Change, and James is so enthusiastic that I feel bad for not having heard of it. Unperturbed, he carries on with his story…
“It was released on Island Records. When I was down in London working on that sleeve, I met Chris Blackwell (who owned Island Records) and he said, ‘We’re doing this album for Steve Winwood, would you like to produce the cover illustration?’ So I did the first Steve Winwood solo album.”
James also designed single sleeves for the likes of Simple Minds and other well-known bands.
I can’t help but laugh at the mention of single sleeves… that certainly takes me back! More recently, though, having retired from Birlinn where he was Creative Director, James returned to freelance work.
“It’s a difficult thing to give up,” he admits. “And a lot of people self-publish now. Thanks to current technology you can publish your book yourself fairly economically… and employ folk like me. Kindles and e-books are here, but most people still love a real book, the whole physicality of it. I’m happy as Larry sitting with my headphones on listening to Radio 4 and laying out books.”
Who says men can’t multi-task?
I ask him what he’s working on at the moment.
“I’m working on a book on the history of Jura Whisky for Whyte & Mackay. It’s a kind of social history of people who lived on the island. They’re very mindful of their historic roots and the community roots where a lot of these whiskies came from. And I get to do lots of research.”
He’s wearing a very big smile when he says this, and I suspect it’s not just because of his current project.
“Putting a book together is incredible. You’re working with the latest technology and software… but I like to think if Caxton walked in the studio he would recognise what we were doing. When you think about it, that’s amazing.”
For those who may not know, William Caxton was thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England back in 1476.
It certainly sounds as though James is enjoying his freelance role up in Edinburgh. But what about Ayrshire? Does he miss it?
“Part of my family is originally from Arran, and I was down at Dunure a few weeks ago, looking out across the Clyde to the island – wonderful. I used to go camping in Maidens at Easter… every year for about six years when we were kids. It was like Swallows and Amazons.”
It’s funny how everything comes back to books. Speaking of which… I have to ask…
“You can judge a book by its cover!” he declares.
