Ellie Boultwood

Ellie Boultwood – Designer

I'm an award-winning children's book designer who has worked with the world's leading publishers. I'd love to help bring your book to life!

Overview

**Please note that I am fully booked until October 2024 but happy to take on projects after this date.


Hello, I'm Ellie! I have been a book designer for ten years, working for publishers including Penguin, DK, Little Tiger, Hachette, and Macmillan Books. Most recently, I was Senior Designer at Little Tiger Press, working in the picture books team. Before this, I was a designer at Priddy Books, where I designed innovative novelty books for children. I would love to bring this experience and expertise to your book!


If you take a look at my portfolio you can see a range of work from board books, picture books and novelty books, to older fiction. I love to design all kinds of books!


As a freelance designer, it's my priority to make the process as easy and efficient as possible for you. If you already have an idea of what you'd like, perfect! - we can work together to make that vision a reality. If you'd like some guidance, that's also great, and I'll put together some mood boards and cover ideas for you to check over before finalising a design. Depending on whether you'd like a photographic or illustrated book, I can either source copyright-free photos, or help you find an illustrator and work with them to create your dream book! I design both covers and internal layouts and am happy to do both or either for you.


Please note, I will happily provide print-ready files compatible with your choice of printer. Unfortunately I am unable to provide an epub as my skills lie with printed books, and children's ebooks are a separate field of expertise. However, I can create a pdf that you can convert to an epub using an online converter if you would like.


If you're interested, please do get in touch and we can have an initial chat about timelines, expectations and budget. Thank you.

Services
Non-Fiction
Children’s Non-Fiction
Fiction
Picture Books
Languages
English

Work experience

Self-employed

May, 2023 — Present

Freelance book designer, working with leading publishers and self-publishers.

Little Tiger Press

May, 2021 — Apr, 2023 (almost 2 years)

Working within the picture books team, I sourced and guided illustrators, designed layouts and covers, and created print-ready files.

Priddy Books

Mar, 2016 — Oct, 2020 (over 4 years)

Designed innovative and creative children's novelty books.

Dorling Kindersley

Oct, 2014 — Mar, 2016 (over 1 year)

Designed books for the licensing team including LEGO and Hasbro. Organised and directed photoshoots for LEGO reference guides.

Ellie has 14 reviews

Professionalism

Quality

Value

Responsiveness

Jennifer S.

Jennifer S.

Jun, 2024

Pinned
We are in the final steps of my picture book and Ellie has been a delight to work with. She's quick with message responds, has great insight, and has been a big help in the confusing word of self-publishing. I plan to write many more picture books and will happily work with Ellie again. Thank you Ellie!
Liz L.

Liz L.

Mar, 2024

Pinned
Ellie was so helpful and integral to my book coming to fruition. She’s extremely knowledgeable about the industry and makes great recommendations. My print files for two separate printers came back perfect because of her attention to detail. I would highly recommend Ellie!
Adam B.

Adam B.

Mar, 2024

Pinned
It’s been a complete pleasure working with Ellie. Always prompt and completely professional with a lovely manner which made communication so easy. Being a newcomer to the world of children’s books, I was particularly grateful for the guidance to help frame some of the questions I should have been asking at the start of the project.
Karen B.

Karen B.

Sep, 2024

It was lovely to work with Ellie on 'The Tale of the Little Black Cloud.' I appreciated Ellie's never give up attitude, willingness to step outside of the box in designing and formatting this heartwork. She is warm, but professional creative Thanks Ellie!
Claire C.

Claire C.

Aug, 2024

Ellie is very kind, and we both remained respectful despite the project not going as we had hoped. She is a lovely person, and her strong suit is the layout of text on the internal pages—she nailed it! However, we struggled with the spine design. Ellie worked late hours, but her slow internet made it challenging to get files quickly and prevented us from having a call, which I highly recommend ...
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Ellie B.
Thank you so much for your review, Claire! Unfortunately this project caught me at a time when I was temporarily without proper internet access, which accounted for the slow progress of this partic...
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