Holly, Designer
Tell us a bit about you and how you came to work at Priddy Books.
I actually did work experience at Priddy as part of my Publishing MA course back in 2015. In 2016 I moved to London without a job (scariest thing I’ve ever done!) and contacted Priddy on the off chance that they might have some temp work going. Luckily their junior designer had gone on jury duty that same week! They kept me on as a junior after that and I worked my way up from there.
What does a normal day look like for you?
Every day can be different depending on what stage my projects are at. At the moment I’m prepping files to send to the printer, checking proof copies of a book to make sure it’s ready to print, researching layouts for a new non-fiction project, looking for illustrators for a novelty book, as well as general admin like archiving completed projects. And that’s not even a busy day!
What is your favorite part of your job?
The moment when I get final artwork in from an illustrator and it looks exactly how I imagined the book to be – or better! It’s a really special feeling to work with such talented people who are able to take my rough sketches of layouts and turn them into something beautiful.
What bit of your job do you think people would be most surprised to learn you do?
Probably the artworking – we make a lot of photographic books here and as we’re a relatively small team we do all the artworking ourselves. This means using Photoshop to ‘cut out’ (remove) the background of a photograph so we can put it into a book. It can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to do a good cutout, depending on the subject. Working with pictures of super cute baby animals all day is a tough job, but someone’s got to do it!
Which book have you worked on that you feel most proud of?
I’d say Countdown to Christmas is the one I’m most proud of. It’s a new title due out this year, I found an illustrator that we haven’t worked with before and she’s made this book look absolutely gorgeous. It’s got some really lovely wheel novelties and a cute fold-out advent calendar at the back (which I will definitely be using this December!)
