Cover Stories: Lagos Will Be Hard For You

We’re so excited that Lagos Will Be Hard For You by Ayotola Tehingbola is publishing this week! To kick off celebrations, we sat down with Zain Kazerooni from the Jacaranda Books Production Team to delve into the inspiration and symbolism behind the book’s striking cover design.

1. What visual references and sources of inspiration informed the design for this cover?

We explored a number of visual approaches to evoke Lagos throughout the design process, experimenting with different iterations featuring the city skyline and urban landscapes before arriving at the final cover.

One of the key inspirations was the Third Mainland Bridge, an iconic landmark in Nigeria and the longest bridge in West Africa. We felt it was a subtle but powerful way to situate the story within Lagos. Rather than making the bridge the focal point, we chose to place it more quietly within the background so that it would enrich the atmosphere of the cover without overwhelming it.

For me, the real focal point of the design is the interplay between colour and typography. The title appears soft and dreamy, especially with how it’s situated within the clouds. It creates an intentional contrast with the phrase Lagos Will Be Hard For You, which I think makes for an interesting visual paradox. It creates tension and intrigue while reflecting the layered nature of the city itself.

2. What core themes from Lagos Will Be Hard For You were most important for you to convey visually, and how did you translate them into the cover brief?

Because Lagos Will Be Hard For You is a short story collection, one of the main challenges was finding a visual language that could unify stories that are emotionally and thematically diverse. The collection explores themes of grief, survival, migration, mental health, sexuality, spirituality, family pressure, and identity, all through deeply personal narratives shaped by Nigerian life and experience.

This idea was translated visually through the inclusion of the Third Mainland Bridge, one of the most recognisable landmarks in Lagos and the longest bridge in West Africa. The bridge became a symbolic anchor for the cover–a subtle representation of movement, connection, transition, and the shared cultural space that ties the stories together. Combined with the softer, dreamlike typography and colour palette, the design aims to reflect both the intensity and humanity that run throughout the collection.

3. How did you arrive at the final colour palette, and is there any symbolism behind the dark blue, pink and yellow tones?

The dark blue carries a nocturnal, almost atmospheric quality, suggesting night-time and a sense of depth or stillness. This is then disrupted by the bright pink and yellow tones, which introduce energy, heat, and vibrancy. Together, the colours create a kind of liminal space, which felt important in reflecting the emotional tension running through the collection.

4. How do the UK and Nigerian covers speak to each other visually - do you feel each cover reflects a different side to the story?

Both covers are in conversation with each other through their shared focus on place and environment, with each offering a different lens on Nigeria.

While both depict Nigerian settings and surroundings, the Nigerian cover leans more directly into a streetscape: a residential neighbourhood view that situates the stories within everyday domestic and urban life. This more immediate, grounded perspective contrasts with our UK cover, which takes a slightly more atmospheric and symbolic approach.

Together, they reflect different facets of the same narrative world: one more rooted in lived, everyday locality, and the other more interpretive and mood-led, allowing the themes of the collection to resonate across different visual registers.

5. Is there anything else you’d like our audience to know about the design process behind this cover?

A lot of time was spent testing different ways of representing Lagos visually, and finding a balance between recognisability and subtlety so that the cover could feel rooted in place without becoming overly literal.

It was also a project I really enjoyed working on. There was a lot of freedom to experiment with mood, colour, and typography, and it was rewarding to see how those elements gradually came together into a cohesive visual language for the book.

Lagos Will Be Hard For You by the brilliant Ayotola Tehingbola is a a contemporary collection of short stories, set between Nigeria and the US, exploring the constant straddling of two worlds. It examines grief, migration, sexuality, spirituality and survival.

Lagos Will Be Hard For You is out in the UK on 4th June. You can pick up your copy here and everywhere books are sold.