Design

I see design as a translation of a book’s heart rather than a literal depiction of the words it contains. The cover should help a book’s audience to find it and understand it. The interior should be the gentle hand that guides them through the book’s progression.

Book Covers & Jackets

At Ooligan Press, we have a democratic system where anyone can submit design concepts in multiple stages. In the semi-final round, the management team decides on the top 3 designs to put forward for a press-wide vote. The covers for A Freelance Editor’s Guide to Ethics and Entrepreneurship, Cekpa, and All the Daughters Sing are cover concepts I submitted as part of this process. My cover concept for the editor’s guide was in the top 4 during management discussions. The purple cover I designed for Cekpa made it into the top 3, though it ultimately did not win.

The remaining covers (The Elements of Style, The Secret Place, and Emma) were assignments for book design courses I took in Portland State’s book publishing program, as was the full jacket for Tanglewood Tales.

EFA Cover Concept semifinal copy - slightly edited copy

Book Interiors

At Ooligan Press, students with experience in InDesign are eligible design the interior layouts for galleys and final copies. I was selected to create the galley interior for The Neighborhood Dames, a sample of which is included below. This project presented several design challenges due to the number of chapters and the various text treatments included throughout (lyrics, letters, newspaper articles).

The interiors for Pet Pan, The Elements of Style, and Tanglewood Tales were all done through design courses in the book publishing program. With The Elements of Style, we were tasked with maintaining the formatting found in the Project Gutenberg EPUB. The spacing of this text and the inclusion of tables made this a challenging project which required creative thinking and an ability to prioritize.

The Elements of Style – Excerpt

Tanglewood Tales

Peter Pan

Protected: The Neighborhood Dames Galley (Excerpts)

Bookish Design

In the publishing program, we also gain experience making documents related to books, such as designing menus, writing design briefs, and creating typography samples.

Pambiche

Restaurant Menu

A menu concept for a local Portland restaurant.

Typography Portfolio 1

Typography Sample Portfolio

A portfolio showing:
1) Expressive words
2) Type choices for 5 words across 5 genres
3) Type pairings
4) A specification sheet on Palatino Linotype