Design portfolio:
Book typesetting & cover design

Away with the Færies book

Madeleine Cook

Maddie, a young writer writing for teenagers, was about to self-publish her debut fantasy novel on the Amazon® CreateSpace™ platform, and wanted a professional and striking cover design that would attract potential readers to her work. A lovingly-crafted photo montage brought to life the mood she wanted to get across, coupled with custom title typography. Full book text typesetting completed the job, all provided in the correct, press-ready format files for Maddie to upload for publication. To take a closer look at part of the book, download a PDF here. To read the whole book, you can buy a copy here.

First Aid books

Kingsley Ogedengbe

Kingsley, a First Aid trainer with a keen interest in teaching children valuable life skills, wanted to produce an easy-to-follow guide to basic First Aid for parents and their children to use together. As part of his mission, he also wanted to tackle the associated subject of emotional trauma, through his concept of ‘Emotional First Aid’, again in a light and simple way. The challenge here was to take Kingsley’s part-worked base material and shape it into two attractive and coherently-presented books, in a style that both children and adults could relate to. Using a consistent colour palette, text layout style, and illustration style throughout, Kingsley now also has a visual language he can work with as he develops his training and other assets to sit alongside the books (see some examples of additional graphics below). To take a closer look at part of Let’s Learn First Aid, download a PDF here. You can buy a copy of Let’s Learn First Aid here and buy a copy of Let’s Become Emotional First Aiders here.

First Aid books: additional graphics

Kingsley Ogedengbe

As part of his First Aid books project (see above), Kingsley needed additional graphics created. Shown here are his First Aid Manikin graphics, downloadable certificates, button badges and promotional roller banners.

Five Deadly Sins book

Steve Lazarus

Steve, an expert insurance loss assessor, wanted to self-publish his helpful book, about avoiding the perils of insurance claims, and wanted a bold cover reminiscent of a certain leading player in self-help books without blatantly copying them. Not only that, but the cover had to accommodate one of the longest book titles ever and still be impactful! The book was completed with full text typesetting and press-ready files were supplied to Steve for him to upload to an on-demand book printing website for production. He was very pleased with the finished product, saying “My book arrived and it looks great. In fact when I posted it on Facebook I got more comments and likes than ever before.” To take a closer look at part of the book, download a PDF here. To read the whole book, you can buy a copy here.

Process & Prosper! book cover

Wendy Harrington

Wendy needed a cover designing for her new book and she needed it fast — it was going to press in two days! She was delighted with the result: a simple, attractive, uplifting (no pun intended) and immediate design, with totally royalty-free imagery, presented press-ready on deadline.

Get Off Your Arse books

Brad Burton

A motivational business book, primarily aimed at the self-employed, and its sequel. With no publisher on board, Brad wanted to achieve a quality of presentation that a lot of self-published books don’t reach. The cover and text page design strikes a balance between edginess and professionalism, conveying the character of the author and the brass tacks stream-of-consciousness style of the writing. Don’t those covers just scream for attention? To take a closer look at part of book one, download a PDF here, and for book two press here. For more information about Brad and his books (plus links to buy them), go to his website here. Read more about the creation of Get Off Your Arse here.

Now What? book

Brad Burton

After the success of Brad’s first three business books, he wanted a simpler and cleaner style for this, his fourth. With his credentials as an author established, he wanted to focus on the message, plain and simple. No-nonsense, sans-serif typefaces are used this time — unusual in a book text, but workable here because it’s not a dense layout. Once again, as many readers have testified, it is a quick and easy read, gets its strong points across directly, and has many reading the whole thing in one sitting! If you want to be one of those readers, you can buy a copy here. To take a closer look at part of the book, download a PDF here.

BradCamp notebook

Brad Burton

Brad needed a slew of materials to accompany his regular life-and-business bootcamps, and as part of this wanted a branded hardback notebook. The result was these smart, lively-looking books that help form part of the overall get-up-and-go look for BradCamp and provide not just an aide-mémoire but a memento of the day worth keeping.

Nine Drawings book

Barry Cook

Barry had spent five years writing a book that was, in his words, “part memoir, part fantasy, part social document”, and wanted to create a professional-looking paperback version of it that would reflect his work and that he could give copies of to family and friends as a gift. The finished product reflects the love and care that has gone into writing it, with the text pages set out in a neat and subtle format that helps the reader through the narrative, and a cover that is at once evocative and wistful — if slightly unsettling — giving a sense of what is expressed in the book. On-demand printing, coupled with an accomplished finished look, meant he could confidently go ahead and publish, to share with a wider audience. There is an e-book version too. To take a closer look at part of the book, download a PDF of part of the print version here. To read the whole book, you can buy a copy here.

101 Habits book

Helen Dewdney a.k.a. The Complaining Cow

An established force in consumer rights, Helen had written this direct book of tips on the subject of complaining. She had already had some work done on the cover, so the task here was to take that and complete it, and to complement that look in the text page design. The challenge with the page design was to arrive at a clear, attractive standard layout that allowed for adequate text sizes whilst accommodating widely varying amounts of text on a page. The artwork was completed with the inclusion of suitable icon graphics sourced by Helen from Noun Project. The book was then also formatted for e-book for simultaneous publication. To take a closer look at part of the book, download a PDF here. To read the whole book, you can buy a copy here.