My husband, David, works with me. He’s an artist, too, and he actually has all the technical skills. I design my books because I have a certain look in mind when I come up with the idea and I want that to go all the way through.
So we pick the type face. Often, he’ll adapt the type face for me because it is important that, when I have young readers, some type faces, a “d,” the ascender, the stick on the “d” might not be tall enough and it might be a little confusing to a beginning reader. It might look more like an “a.”
So sometimes, we’ll modify type faces. If I want the type to kind of go in a curve across the page, I just indicate that and then I’ll draw a line and he’ll make the type so that it does that. Or if it goes from bigger to smaller, or in my one book where it’s the flashing beetles, the type actually looks like it’s flashing.
So he works with me on all the placement and gets all the mechanicals ready. He scans my art in and does all the placement so that when it gets to New York, they know where all the type should go and where all the crop, the cutoff edges are on the art.
But he also works with me and it’s funny because sometimes when I can’t get an idea to work, he’ll give me suggestions. And the joke is that his suggestions are always really pretty bad but it usually gives me an idea for where I want to go.
So then it comes time for the bad suggestion conversation. But that’s very helpful. And my daughter, she used to be more involved in my books. She teaches at a junior college and she’s kind of my editor/proofreader ahead of time.
