Project Overview

Jacket art and typography for Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen, a novel about Lee Lien, daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, who struggles to find meaning post-grad, and discovers a surprising connection between her family and the family of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on The Prairie novels.

Project Commissioner

Penguin USA

Project Creator

The Studio of Chris Silas Neal

Project Brief

Jacket art and typography for Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen, a novel about Lee Lien, daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, who struggles to find meaning post-grad, and discovers a surprising connection between her family and the family of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on The Prairie novels.

Project Innovation/Need

We decided to invoke the original covers from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie. Instead of doing a direct parody or one for one comparison which would not have matched the tone of the novel, Paul Buckley hired Chris Silas Neal to make a new piece of art and lettering, taking several cues from vintage covers while also drawing something that feels contemporary.

Design Challenge

The biggest challenge was to make a drawing that invoked a long time favorite Young Reader series while at the same time, designing a cover that felt like an adult contemporary novel. Book sellers and publishers take careful measures to ensure that books for adult readers and books for young readers feel and look different. In this case, we walked and perhaps blurred this line.

Effectiveness

We ended up with the exact book cover we set out to make which in publishing is a near miracle. Readers and book sellers seem to enjoy the art as well as the story inside.