Tom Howey – Designer

I've designed hundreds of book covers, and dozens of complete books, during a decade-and-a-half in publishing in London and Berlin. Many books proved to be very successful, and were translated into multiple languages and published across the world. Some books were even lucky enough to win or be nominated for awards.

My emphasis is on working closely with authors and editors to create designs that work. A book should look good–it needs to be eye-catching and appealing–but aesthetics aren't enough on their own. To be successful a design needs to communicate the book's content, respect the context of the wider genre, and appeal to those that might wish to read it.

On occasion I've put pen to paper myself and contributed to books about typography, design and architecture, so I understand some of this from the other side, as a writer. I also worked in bookshops for several years, so have an understanding of how books behave in their natural habitat. I read widely, and one of my favourite parts of this job is learning about new subject areas, and trying to figure out how best to represent them visually.

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Press reviews of one of my previous designs:

The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti

Winner of 'Art Book of the Year' at the 2014 Los Angeles Book Festival

"The art book to beat all art books"

Huffington Post

"It’s beautiful"

New York Times

"A piece of art in and of itself"

Examiner

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Praise from authors, as passed on by editors:

"It is perfect!!! Please thank the designer for me." –R.M.

"I'm seriously delighted, do please let the designers know, won't you?" –K.M.

"I love these. This is just the sort of thing I envisioned. My thanks to the designer." –J.S.

"There are five of the authors in the room just at the moment and they all went 'wow!' when they saw the covers!" –E.C. & D.B.

"Please do pass on my thanks to the design team for their work, and for so clearly working to my preferences." –N.A.

"We are very pleased with the cover designs! Bravo to the artist who synthesized our various suggestions and images into such a beautiful design! We love it. Love it." –S.A.S., J.E.F. & T.J.G.

"I'm really pleased with the design that the team have come up with... could you please send on my compliments and let them know how happy I am with their work?" –K.K.

'The author is too excited to choose: "Love them!!!"' –M.M.

'The author has replied with the exact words "Wow, they both look fantastic!"' –M.J.

'The author absolutely loved the concept! She "adores them both" and wanted to express her "gratitude to the incredible design team."' –S.G.

'The author said the suggestions were "amazing."' –M.E.

"Thank you for designing such a great cover for my recently published book–I'm very happy with the result and I've already received a lot of positive feedback." –H.L.