Thrawn Ascendancy Cover Designs: Interview with Sarofsky

The Thrawn Ascendancy trilogy has so far taken Star Wars fans beyond a galaxy far, far away—its author Timothy Zahn uncovering the complex and intriguing story of the Chiss while exploring Thrawn’s true origin story. Now it is said that it’s not good to judge a book by its cover, but in the case of the trilogy the cover designs have fascinated readers before each book’s release. Featuring minimalistic and bold designs, each book cover for Chaos Rising, Greater Good, and the upcoming Lesser Evil inspire mystery and wonder to what awaits inside. Team Sarofsky—well known for their main-on-end titles for Marvel Studios—was brought into the Thrawn Ascendancy cover designs project by Del Rey Star Wars art director Scott Biel. “I knew about Sarofsky and had been wanting to work with the studio for a while but wanted to find a big project to fully utilize their talents. Thrawn is an important character that crosses over multiple platforms and is an essential part of Star Wars storytelling, so when it was discussed we’d be doing a Thrawn origin story of sorts I thought it would be the perfect opportunity for Sarofsky and a chance to try something different for a Star Wars cover,“ Biel shared in an interview with TatooineTimes.com.

Sarofsky creative lead Duarte Elvas shined the light about the source material given to the team prior to implementing the designs. “We were provided a detailed synopsis of each book, which was a very important asset for our artists to become familiar with the characters and with the main take-aways from each narrative. It really helped inform the themes of the covers.”

In terms of composition, executive creative director Erin Sarofsky delved into the team’s decision to take on a minimalistic approach for the book covers and the inspiration behind it. “Scott [Biel] proposed to us going in a different direction than the franchise had been doing. We immediately talked about taking a more minimalist, bold design approach. The challenge it presented was exciting. How do we do a minimal design with the focus on Thrawn without doing a traditional rendering of him.” She continued, “Our process starts with working in a wider variety of styles, including options that did have much more detail as well as even simpler, abstract options. As usual, the client knows best, and fell in love with the comps that led to the final cover for Chaos Rising.”

Although the Thrawn Ascendancy trilogy is all about the Chiss, the iconic blue color of the race was not included within the palette for the cover designs. “Most of the ideas we explored initially leaned heavily into the blue with a red accent. Since the edges of the pages were dyed blue [for Chaos Rising], the black, blueish gray and red worked as a very nice contrast,” Elvas said. Erin Sarofsky added, “It’s funny, I’m just realizing that in the two main-on-ends we did for Marvel’s Captain America franchise, we also left blue out. I can assure you, we hold no grudges against blue. With characters that have a dark side, we just push the blue so far towards black, it becomes black.” However, the blue was used for the stunning artwork featuring a depiction of Thrawn’s angular visage alongside the title page within Chaos Rising (in Greater Good, the same piece was changed to grayscale).

Seeing the complete set of the Thrawn Ascendancy cover designs shows a visual progression that beautifully symbolizes the trilogy’s storyline. Team Sarofsky explained the visual evolution of the cover designs. Erin Sarofsky said, “One of the things that drew us to this project was that we knew we would be creating the covers for the complete trilogy. We loved the challenge of both making stunning covers that worked for one book, but also that would relate to each other as a set. As main title designers we understand how to distill a narrative. I suppose this is the extreme version of that.” Duarte Elvas added, “We started this process by exploring the cover for Chaos Rising. Once we landed on this minimalist style, we knew that this would carry over into the other two books. Other than the style, colors and typography layout, the Chimaera symbol and the depiction of Thrawn himself were the connecting elements across all three cover designs. Most of the brainstorming and design exploration consisted of ways we could have these elements interact in a way that was relevant to the narrative of each book. For example: If and when should we use the Ascendancy symbol? Is Thrawn walking towards us? Is he falling? How do we show crumbling? These were all questions that informed our visual exploration and ultimately the final designs.”

Team Sarofsky shared the excitement about seeing their Thrawn Ascendancy cover designs materialize in the hands of the Star Wars reading community. 3D artist Tanner Wickware (also a big Star Wars fan) said, “It’s really cool and special for a studio like Sarofsky that doesn’t have a chance to work in the print medium often to have such an opportunity. We usually work in motion for advertising and entertainment, so being able to explore this space and interpreting the author’s vision in an original and fun way, was an amazingly rewarding challenge.” Erin Sarofsky concluded, “It’s so interesting, we’ve worked on so many big movie and TV titles, and none of them had the buzz about our design online that these covers had. Star Wars fans really are so special, and we felt so loved and appreciated by them.”

The Thrawn Ascendancy cover designs are among the most stunning within Star Wars publishing, and their symbolism perfectly represents the fascinating story within the trilogy. Make sure to follow team Sarofsky on Instagram, Twitter, and also visit the official website to learn more about their incredible work and upcoming projects.