Episode #254: Novel Design with Sasha Illingworth!
Grace and Alvina continue their "publishing curriculum" series and welcome special guest Sasha Illingworth, Associate Creative Director, to talk about the middle grade and young adult book design process, and Sasha shares some tips for aspiring illustrators, and the talk about cover trends. For the Fortune Cookies segment, they talk about what they want for their personal styles!
How have you been?
Grace has been intensely painting for her novels as the art is all due by the end of July. It’s a really interesting part of the process. She loves it the most, but she seems like she always has to rush through it. Her garden is successfully growing vegetables! Alvina is coming off of a nice three-day weekend for Memorial Day. Sasha has started to pain again for the first time since she started college. It was wonderful to paint flowers again.
The Book Design Process
Sasha explains in detail the process of designing a novel and the interior design process.
Fortune Cookie: Personal Fashion Style
This topic came to Grace after listening to the Gretchen Rubin podcast! How could we develop our own fashion style? You need to choose 3 words to style your clothes around: 1. practical, 2. aspirational, and 3. emotional. What are the 3 words you would use? The book friends share their fashion style.
Gratefuls
Chinese Menu was one of the Bank Street books of the year! Grace is also grateful for being on the cover of her friend’s book, “Books Make Good Friends” by Jane Mount. Alvina is grateful for the design team! Sasha is grateful for the design team too and feels so lucky to be working at Little Brown.
Thank you!
Thank you to Hachette Audio, Little Brown Books for Young Readers, and Alex at Pacyworks Studio for producing and editing this podcast. Be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and tell a friend about us. (Use the hashtag #bookfriendsforever.)
You can find Alvina @Planetalvina on Twitter and TikTok and @Alvinaling on Instagram and Threads, @alvinaling on BlueSky
You can find Grace @Pacylin on Instagram and Threads, @authorgracelin on Facebook, @gracelinauthor on TikTok, and @authorgracelin on BlueSky Social!
You can find Sasha on https://www.sashaillingworthdesign.com/, on Instagram @sasha_illingsworth
Please keep tagging and messaging us on social media using the hashtag #bookfriendsforever! OR email us at bookfriendsforever@gmail.com! Please let us know if you have any topic ideas!
