Title page designer: Carli Hyland

Carli Hyland designed the title page for the interview with photographer Olga Bennett in our new book Conversations with Creative Women: Volume Two, and today we find out a little more about her...

What is your art/design/career background? I initially studied a Bachelor of Visual Arts with a focus on Photography and Printmaking. Afterwards I was drawn to graphic design as an application of the skills and methods I learnt during my Bachelor. Over the last seven years I have been moving between Australia and The Netherlands where I have been working with numerous and diverse clients. Now I am based in Denmark and I have a business called Studio HyHy.

Studio HyHy is a graphic design studio focused on tactility and simplicity. We combine old school and digital techniques to produce beautifully crafted products, anything from a poster, publication or website.

What drew you to the work of your interviewee? Coming from a photographic background I was naturally attracted to Olga's work. The simplicity in her photographs is poetic and powerful and in many ways also quite graphic.

Tell us about the development of your title page design and how you arrived at your concept. I started out with the idea to create a hand water-coloured bokeh effect to blend with the typography of her name. Olga photographs many artists in their studios and I thought it would be interesting to bring in this tactility to the title page. After a few experiments I decided it wasn't really working out so I moved to a more graphic approach and created a retro style light meter. In this way I focused more on the process and technique and let her work speak for itself.

What materials or computer programs did you use to create the title page, and how did you then prepare it to be submitted for the book? For the most part I created the design in Illustrator, I did a bit of hunting around for the right retro style typeface and the final step was in Photoshop where I added a bit of texture to different elements of the design. When I start a design I always check for the technical aspects first and create a blank document accordingly, so then you don't have to migrate it over the final stage.

What other fun projects are your working on now? In August I started working full time with the great folks at Sustainia. Sustainia is part of the Danish think tank Mandagmorgen. We work on bringing together research and solutions around sustainability and communicate them to a broad audience. As the Sustainia graphic designer, I am kept busy with our many publications plus promotional materials and presentations.

Thanks Carli! You can read the interview with photographer Olga Bennett in our new book, now available in paperback and digital form.