Committee Members

• George Saad

  President

  Designer

  • freelance work
  • professional designers

  George is a freelance book designer and the recipient of the Emerging Designer’s Award, 2022. He loves type, and gets inspiration from film and other media. He is interested in blending the traditional world of books with more modern media.

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• Josh Durham

  Vice-President

  Design by Committee

  • freelance work
  • independent and self-publishing projects
  • professional designers

  Josh worked in magazine design before setting up his company Design by Committee under the mentorship of Australian book design luminary W.H. Chong. He draws upon a broad skill base to offer both illustrative and concept driven solutions to literary…

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• Susan Le

  Secretary

  Designer, Art director & Illustrator.

  • professional designers

  Susan Le is a designer, & illustrator specialising in publication design. She was previously art director at Evi-O.studio. Books have always been her passion. She studied Visual Communications Design at UTS and has been designing and illustrating books since 2018.

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• Elysia Clapin

  Treasurer

  Book designer and illustrator

  • freelance work
  • independent and self-publishing projects

  Elysia is a book designer and illustrator based in Sydney. She has worked in publishing for over a decade at Pantera Press, and loves all the parts of her job - from creating covers to scribbling bespoke dinkuses. In 2020,…

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• Maya Abraham

  Committee Member

  Marketing Designer at HarperCollins ANZ

  Maya is a Sydney-based graphic designer having joined HarperCollins Design Studio in 2021, and specialising in crafting compelling marketing materials for book releases. As a Marketing Designer, Maya takes pride in her diverse design skills working with digital ads to…

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• 

  Casey Schuurman

  Committee Member
  Book Designer, Lettering Artist & Illustrator
  
  Based in Castlemaine, Victoria, Casey is a
  freelance designer with a love for all things print.
  Her background is in hand-lettering/illustration
  as well as magazine design at Frankie Press.
  She is however, most passionate about the
  book design space and over the last few years
  has begun working more predominantly on
  illustrated books — cookbooks, lifestyle and
  craft books — where she can best use her
  visual expertise.

• 

  Emi Chiba

  Committee Member
  Book Designer
  
  Emi Chiba is a Sydney-based designer whose curiosity has been piqued by the wondrous world of publishing. In 2021, Emi graduated from University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) with a BA Design in Visual Communications and a BA in International Studies. Now a Midweight Designer, Emi has found a design calling in blurring the beauty and the accessibility–a golden touch in commercial publishing. She believes that books can be objects of art, and that this philosophy is integral to the future of publishing design.

• 

  Kait Polkinghorne

  Committee Member
  Book Designer
  
  Kait is a designer and illustrator based on
  Gadigal land (Sydney, Australia) who specialises
  in fully-illustrated books. She started her career
  at Evi-O.Studio, where she learnt the craft of
  book design & illustration and working on over
  thirty titles during her time there. In 2024 she was runner up for the Deb Brash Emerging Designer of the Year Award.

• 

  Zara Olifent

  Committee Member
  Production Coordinator, Text Publishing
  
  Zara currently works as Text Publishing’s
  production coordinator in Melbourne. She was
  an editorial and publishing assistant at Te Papa
  Press of New Zealand’s national museum. She
  has over six years experience in communitybased
  exhibition and coordination experience and
  is a keen printmaker, photographer, and amateur
  letterpress printer.

• 

  Eloise Myatt

  Committee Member
  Designer, Evi-O Studio
  
  Eloise is a designer and illustrator from Gadigal land in Sydney. After working as a brand designer at Re, for the past ten months she has been at Evi-O.Studio working on cookbooks and lifestyle books. While she is new to the industry, she isn’t new to books—she was a bookseller at Kinokuniya where she developed a love for publication design.

• 

  Thomas Deverall

  Committee Member
  Manager, Graphic Design Projects, NGV
  
  Thomas has been a graphic designer – with an emphasis on publication and editorial design – for almost two decades and most recently as Manager, Graphic Design Projects at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). He works alongside artists, curators, illustrators, typographers, designers and printers to create the beautiful books that the NGV is well known for. Prior to working at the NGV, he was the inhouse designer at Black Inc. where he designed covers and internals for a wide range of trade titles including memoir, poetry, fiction and non-fiction.

• 

  Anja Clausius

  Committee Member (Student)
  
  Anja Clausius is an emerging designer working, studying, and creating in Sydney / on Gadigal Land. Fascinated by the complexities and delights that come with typography, publication design, artistic direction, motion, and coding, I seek to evolve forms of communication through digital and physical means. Much of my work is informed by my love for knitting, the cinema, and natural landscapes. Connection between art, environment, and the individual is central in my life, and my creations.