Jessica Hyde has designed the title page for the interview with book designer and illustrator Michelle Mackintosh in our new book Conversations with Creative Women: Volume Two. Today we chat to Jess about her background and future!

What is your art/design/career background? I originally studied Architecture and since graduating in 2007 I have been combining working in that field and exploring my real passion for illustration, paper and graphic design. All of that exploration is channeled into my own little creative studio TRUTH.BE.TOLD, which now includes freelance illustration, custom stationery design, as well as the TRUTH.BE.TOLD stationery and paper goods range.

What drew you to the work of your interviewee, book designer Michelle Mackintosh? I have always dreamed of one day being a book designer, so when I was doing a little research on the talented ladies being profiled in the book and saw that Michelle had my dream job I had to find out more. I also absolutely love her illustrative style. Tell us about the development of your title page design and how you arrived at your concept.

After doing some initial research to find out more about Michelle and her work, I was a little stumped about what direction to take – her work is quite varied and I didn’t want to try and replicate Michelle’s work but I wanted to try and instill a little of the whimsy I saw in her illustrations. I decided to draw inspiration from her choice of mediums and colour palettes in her illustrations and incorporate some of these into the title page design.

I went through many ideas before settling on the simple idea of an open book as a sort of canvas for ideas and allowing the watercolour and textured style be highlighted. After that all of the elements came together pretty quickly.

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? I used a combination of hand and digital elements to create the title page. I hand painted a series of watercolour washes to create the book pages and accents, which I then layered and shaped in Photoshop. I also drew and painted the lettering by hand before adding it to the digital collage. Finally the grid and background colour was added in Photoshop.

What other fun projects are your working on now? At the moment I’m working on custom stationery for upcoming spring and summer weddings and events, as well as designing my own collection of event stationery, which I will hopefully finish off very soon! I’ve also been working on a whole bunch of new designs and experimenting with screen-printing for my TRUTH.BE.TOLD range.

Thanks Jess! See Jess this Sunday at the Greville St Market (perhaps pop over after our event on Sunday morning!).

And you can pre-order your copy of 'Conversations with Creative Women: Volume Two' featuring Jess' title page design now at our online shop.