Countless biographies of Shakespeare have been published and most of them tend to resort to very expected cover solutions. I wanted to avoid all the obvious clichés—the redundant old scripty type solutions, the quill. The challenge was making the imagery instantly recognizable and making it look modern yet authoritative.

Since the title of the book was William Shakespeare, I thought that since Shakespeare was a recognizable face there was no real need to state the obvious by repeating his name on the cover. The subtitle could easily be placed on the spine (and it was). Laurie Rosenwald (the illustrator) was chosen for her ability to capture a likeness and her beautiful informal line quality. Add some orange, yellow, a little silver foil and voilà!