Ami Smithson, former Creative Director at Headline and jacket designer for SMOKED, dares to be different…

After reading Patrick Quinlan’s SMOKED, I was very afraid. Very afraid because I knew designing this jacket was not going to be easy – it is such a good novel, which is always just that little bit more challenging for a designer. It is original, potentially a bestseller, has cross-gender appeal, is funny and frightening, with a hero and heroine to die for – even villains who are attractive!

The jacket deserved a different treatment to everything else on the market. I wanted it to be something unexpected, that transcended the usual thriller genre styles, showing more but with less. So no blurry ‘Da Vinci Code’ figures, no sinister and misty landscapes, and no Tarantino splurts of blood.

Smoke Dugan is such a great character – and an unlikely hero with a distinctive appearance, so I wanted to feature him on the cover. I love slightly retro, very simple and stylised graphics. Good examples would be Saul Bass movie posters which are clear, nostalgic, and say as much with empty space as with line, making a comic style a serious message, but with charm. So this is what I hope I have achieved with SMOKED.