Art Director Vi-An Nguyen, a Pod Exclusive

The Meet Cute BookPod

In The Meet Cute BookPod's second podcast exclusive, Becca chats with Vi-An Nguyen, an Art Director with Penguin Random House. Becca starts with a very technical question: What even is art direction? Then Vi-An explains the many considerations that go into crafting the book covers we see on the shelves, including social media’s effect on cover design and who has input about what a cover should look like. Vi-An and Becca debate the pros and cons of the contrasting spine on a trade paperback, then Vi-An attempts to answer Becca's burning question about why the same book has different covers in different countries. Vi-An talks about the trends she’s seeing in cover design now, and the interplay between covers for historical and contemporary romance. She shares where she finds inspiration, and she and Becca talk red carpet fashion because why not? Then they give their hot takes on object covers and, finally, Becca asks Vi-An about how she ended up in this very cool job.