Steven Heller on Paul Bacon and his time working as a book jacket designer:
“The Simon & Shuster advertising people liked the idea of using an icon or a logo on a jacket as opposed to the conventional treatments of just type or literal illustration. And Bacon discovered he was good at ‘finding something that would be a synthesis graphically of what the story was about.’ Moreover, since he had no formal training in illustration, he felt free to explore in this realm. ‘I was not encumbered by having to work from models. Many of the things I did, I just did strictly from memory and without any reference at all. Unless I needed something specific, like a German airplane or something – then I’d look it up. But it was very liberating to realize that I didn’t have to do something that looked like Norman Rockwell.’
[…] Bacon didn’t do thumbnails or multiple sketches – just one iteration of any idea. But he was accommodating. ‘If people didn’t like something about a Cole Porter tune, he just tore it up,’ he says. ‘And I did the same thing with the jackets.’
For the 1961 publication of Joseph Heller’s classic Catch-22, he did as many as eleven versions. ‘I did a jacket that just said ‘Catch-22‘ in very large lettering… Then I did one that had [the protagonist] Yossarian bull’s-ass naked, but with his back to you, saluting as a flight of planes went over. I liked that one. Then I did the finger. Then I did a couple of modifications of those. Then at some point I came up with the little guy that I tore out of a piece of paper, representing Yossarian in full flight from everything.'”
— (via Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design)