Awards Book Archive

My Life as a Hashtag
  • Shortlisted

Designed by
Debra Billson
Category
Best Designed Young Adult Cover
Year
2018
Publisher
Allen & Unwin

About the Designer

Debra has been designing books since Roxette had ‘The Look’. She spent her early career creating products for children as an art director and studio manager, until landing her dream job at Penguin Books. For almost a decade, this saw her working across all genres with some of Australia’s highest profile authors, until starting her own business from her Melbourne home-studio in 2007. Whilst having designed everything from children’s board books to cookbooks, Debra’s true love is creating fiction covers…

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Design Rationale

The brief was 12 pages long, and asked for ‘contemporary, funny, fun, cool, cutting-edge, a little bit quirky…’ And, although I pursued around 30 ideas and variations using a combo of illustration and photography, a comment from the author held the key, asking for ‘Two girls leaning in to each other, laughing, one of them wearing a fox hat.’ I was lucky to find a photo of a girl with a hat that was just right, and combined with another that matched, then added the rainbow colours to hark back to the book’s Instagram theme. Simple yet fun and effective.

Details
Dimensions
198 x 128 mm
No. pages
288
Credits
Internal Design
Debra Billson
Typesetting
Debra Billson
Printing
McPherson's Printing Group
Author
Gabrielle Williams