Books and their production are interests that predate my time in graphic design; in a 'previous life' I ran a private press and handset, printed and published slim volumes of poetry (not mine!). Early years as a designer were spent largely freelancing with publishing houses and 'packagers', putting together 'dummies', 'concepting', and designing and laying out an enormous variety of subjects and titles, from coffee-table to schoolbooks to cookbooks.

Clients included Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Mitchell Beazley, Ward Lock, BBC Publications + BBC Educational Publications, Rainbird Publishing Group, Thomas Nelson, Dorling Kindersley, Gower Publishing.

There followed a long association with ELTA/OUP (English Language Teaching for the Arab World/Oxford University Press) designing several series of practical workbooks for teaching and learning English and western script which involved close liaison with production. For some 20 years I have been in-house designer at the RSA, designing, sourcing and controlling a wide variety of printed material including books, reports, newsletters as well as a rich variety of ephemera.

For the last 12 years book work has been principally for self-publishing authors, offering a service as a packager, undertaking every aspect from design concept through to computer setting and artwork, from sourcing print through to production.