Bond & Grace’s Secret Recipe for Making the Art Novel

October 31, 2024

Interviews

Art

Literature

Nesha Ruther

Writer at Bond & Grace

When Jacqueline Bond went searching for a coffee table edition of Pride and Prejudice, she had no idea she was taking the first step to starting her own publishing company. “I have always loved classic literature and am an avid fiction reader,” she says. “I have a collection of more than 50 editions of Jane Austen novels and am constantly searching for unique and beautiful versions of Pride and Prejudice.”

Unfortunately for Jacqueline, no coffee table version of Austen’s seminal novel was available on the market. “I started to realize, ironically, that none of the publishing houses publishing coffee table books were producing works on literature. Their focus remained on travel, interior design, and fashion. They were books not meant to be read,” Jacqueline says. In the same vein, companies that republished classic novels were not doing so as part of the luxury market. “The publishing companies that regularly release the classics were not producing them with collectors in mind. There was little new material to discover in the text and the experience lacked elevation and luxury, they simply changed the cover.”

Jacqueline began to imagine a book that could do both, a cherished edition of a beloved classic novel one could read over and over while still gleaning new insights, and a stunningly beautiful luxury coffee table book. “There was a gap in the market and an opportunity to create reproductions of classic novels that presented as an heirloom, as a collectible, and a true work of art.”

Jacqueline brought the idea to her close friend, Chief Product Officer, Ayana Christie. From there, the Art Novel was born.

Each Art Novel contains the full text of a beloved classic novel, over fifty pieces of bespoke original artwork inspired by the text, visual design to shape a unique reading experience, annotations, a new introduction, and a biographical essay from a global team of literary scholars. The Art Novel’s ingenious structure allows readers of all backgrounds and interests to find an entry point to engage with classic literature, whether it be through the story itself, the original artwork, the annotated insights, or the immaculate design.

Given the level of detail and the expansive team of creatives involved, each Art Novel takes a full year to produce. The first step, of course, is choosing what the Art Novel title is going to be.

“The choice of what book we will feature in the Art Novel is a bit of both art and science,” Ayana says. “We take a look at the books we’ve already created and the books we want to create in the future and select something that feels aligned with the times and gives us enough latitude to create something visually compelling.”

With each title Bond & Grace features in the Art Novel, they strive to not only republish the text but to bring something new to readers’ understanding. “We also identify if there is enough of a story beneath the story for us to excavate in our creative process,” Ayana says.

One of the first ways they accomplish this is through a book club in which all Bond & Grace team members read the text and come prepared to share their ideas, insights, and reactions. Because each team member works with the Art Novel in a different capacity, they see the text in different ways and are able to bring forward different elements of the story that inspire and excite them. “As the producer, I’m thinking about opportunities for us to check the boxes of what we want to accomplish in every Art Novel. So tell a story that hasn’t already been told about the text, remediate topics that may be considered controversial or haven’t aged well since the book was first released, and reimagine some of the visuals that are aligned with the text. As I’m reading the book, it’s important for me to identify opportunities to satisfy that formula,” Aayana explains.

After the book club, the Bond & Grace team gets to work specifying and solidifying the messaging and ideas that were discussed during book club. This means translating everyone’s ideas into the most salient points the team wants to focus on, and identifying how these ideas will be translated into the writing, the artwork, and the design of the Art Novel.

“The thematic selection process is one of diverging and converging,” Ayana says. “We cast the net pretty wide in terms of all the possible things we can say about this text. That big list is a brainstorm and from there, my challenge is to push us to look two levels deeper. What is something we can say that hasn’t already been said about this book? What is something that is really going to resonate with people based on their current life experiences? That’s where the contemporary reference points come in, like being able to introduce AI as a counterpoint to the Creature in Frankenstein. And then, of course, we have to downselect. This is a commercial product and we don’t want to overwhelm people with all the possible ways to interpret the book, and so we prioritize the top things we want to say. We also think about what will have longevity, what will still be resonant when the Art Novel is still on someone’s shelf ten years from now.”

Once the specific Bond & Grace approach to the title novel has been solidified, the Editorial and Creative teams begin seeking out and identifying potential collaborators. For the editorial team, this means finding literary scholars with expertise in the title novel or its author to help Bond & Grace in their analysis. For the creative team, this means identifying the artists whose artistic interpretations will grace the pages of the Art Novel.

“Maggie Lemak is the creative director and curator for our Art Novels and she leads our artist selection and the creative concepts behind our design,” Ayana says. “Some of the criteria we engage with as a baseline is the willingness of the artist to engage the literature as a prompt and to take seriously how the prose and history of the text can inform their process. That is paramount for an artist to be able to participate in this project. We try to create a diversity of perspectives on the text, through selecting people with diverse identities, geographical diversity, and diverse artistic mediums. And then, of course, there’s the fact that many artists have personal connections to the literature. All these things make for a really rich collection.”

While the Artists are creating and the scholars are writing, the Bond & Grace design team is hard at work creating the visual identity for the book. While there are certain design elements that remain consistent across all Art Novels, each book is intentionally designed to support and reinforce the core themes, metaphors, and literary techniques of the featured Art Novel. Textured paper and hand-written typography in Frankenstein’s letters reinforce the epistolary nature of the book, while visual riddles, games, and hidden messages abound in Alice in Wonderland. These immersive design choices work because they support the decisions the author originally made all those years ago.

“We work hard to identify, study, and expand the themes of each title in order to shape an engaging experience for our readers. It has been a fun challenge to tease out meaning within each author’s writing and emphasize particular themes in order to create something new” Maggie adds. “We hadn't seen a romantic–or even a feminine take, really–on Frankenstein prior to creating the Frankenstein Art Novel and I’m confident that our decision to center Mary Shelley helped us solidify our IPPY Award for Outstanding Design this past year.”

Ayana adds that “Often I’ll hear from our scholars who have worked on other publisher’s annotated editions–and I saw this myself in our early research–that there is a disconnect between any visual elements a book contains and the written content. Whereas the content we create, both written and visual, really helps people think differently about the narrative, the emotions, and the influences behind the book. It creates a very different experience than the usual annotated text.”

“I also think our editions are much more relatable,” Jacqueline adds. “We always try to make connections between what is happening today and what is happening in the novel, and that gives context to readers who may not understand the history. It makes it much more palatable for them to read. I also think that the length of our annotations is familiar to people who are used to reading social media captions. It is just a much more user-friendly reading experience.”

“But I think the main thing is that I’ve never seen a more beautiful annotated version of a classic novel than ours,” Jacqueline laughs. “I might be biased, but I don’t think so.”

When the scholars have returned with their writing, and the artists with their artwork, this is when the pieces of the Art Novel start to fall into place. What has heretofore been outlines, sketches, and ideas, begin to take material shape. “My favorite part is when the content really comes together,” Ayana says. “With design, it evolves and evolves and evolves until the very end. With the writing, you reach a point where it feels right and there is an emotional connection with what has been put on the page. That, to me, is very gratifying. It’s probably my favorite part of the process.”

For Jacqueline, who does not work directly on Art Novel production, her favorite moment comes a little while later. “My favorite thing is that I don’t see it until the very end,” she laughs. “I get involved in the final editing phase and am always completely amazed. And this is a good thing because I get to see the book as a user would. I’m a normal reader like anyone else would be and it’s easier to make edits when you haven’t been in the weeds. But that’s always my favorite part, seeing the first draft of the Art Novel, because it's always incredible.”

Jacqueline isn’t the only person getting to see the Art Novel for the first time at this stage. Ayana leads a user testing group throughout the Art Novel creation process that gives the team critical feedback at every juncture. “I love interacting with our users,” Ayana says. “We hand-select our user groups and people in our community often ask to be included. It's a very tight-knit group that meets with me and our customer success associate once a month during the development of the novel. Getting to see these ‘Aha’ moments and seeing their reaction to what we have been working on is a pretty awesome part of the process.”

For a book with so many detailed and intricate elements, it is no doubt hard to choose a favorite, after all, it is designed so that everyone can find something they love in it. For Jacqueline, that thing is the simple act of unboxing the Art Novel. “My favorite feature of the book is the unboxing experience. Opening it, touching the ribbon, and seeing the pages and all the surprise features we include. There are so many little things we do that you wouldn’t expect, and seeing them for the first time when you open the book is my favorite feature.”

The feeling of opening an Art Novel for the first time is truly one of joy and wonder, there is nothing like it. Experience it for yourself and add a Bond & Grace Collector’s Edition Art Novel to your library.