With Illustrada, a frictionless relationship helps your team create memorable, unique books.
- Holistic approach to projects—the forest and the trees. A balanced approach to strategy and detail.
- Collaborative approach to communication—going beyond the brief. My curiosity is your superpower.
- Perspective from cross-industry experience and true out-of-the-box thinking.
- Commitment to honoring all the independent voices that make up indie publishing.
More than just design. At Illustrada, I believe in indie publishing because independent voices are our power.
Case Study: A Legacy in Three Books
It began with a poetry collection. Child of Dawn, Mother of Twilight, the collected poetry of Theresa King, established an arc that would grow into something larger: a suite of books preserving the lives and teachings of two yogis who had shaped their community over decades.
When Nancy Avery of The Wanderer’s Journey brought me the next project, The Art of Fulfilling Your Nature, the brief was clear in its intent, but nuanced in its demands. This was not simply a book. It was a memorial, a way of preserving a teacher’s voice for the students he had shaped, and for generations who would never know him personally.
The easy path would have been to reach for familiar conventions: the expected typefaces, the predictable cover imagery, the genre shorthand. Instead, we worked toward something more considered—design that honored Justin’s warmth and intellectual depth without reducing it to stereotype. The result was a book his publisher described as a “thrill to hold.”
Sacred Rivers, Theresa King’s memoir, completed the trilogy. A companion to Nature yet distinctly its own, it called for a softer register: intimate, personal, woven through with photographs and lived memory.
Across all three, the challenge was the same: to design books that a community would cherish not as dusty artifacts, but as lasting testimony to two lives devoted to practice, teaching, and each other.
Services Summary
Cover/Jacket Design: Audience-focused, engaging—working with you and your authors to dig below the superficial to deliver distinctive concepts and well-executed final print-ready results, mechanicals and all.
Layout & Typesetting/Formatting: Showcase the underlying beauty of your book—the ideas, information, and emotion—in a way that supports and engages readers.
Extra Services:
- Art preparation/photo retouching
- Custom diagrams/figures/graphic preparation
- Art direction for custom illustrations
- eBook conversions
- Special editions
When you work with Illustrada, you are hiring an artisan with the creative and technical skills to design a unique book that stands out. And a partner in the process from finished manuscript to finished book.
I encourage questions and open communication because I care deeply about you, your authors, and your books. My cross-industry experience and problem-solving skills help resolve any issues before they arise.
Design Services that Meet You Where You’re At
Organizations
Trade Publishers
Self Publishers
Cover design, interior layout, typesetting, publishing consultation, photo editing, illustration development, and production assistance.
Whether you are an established press or an up-and-coming publisher, we’ll work together to create something unique and beautiful.
