For a few years after leaving the London College of Printing I’d worked for multi-disciplinary design companies where design for publishing was just another string to the bow. So when I set up Jade in 2000 it felt natural to do the same. My first books were for Merrell Publishers under the watchful eye of art-director Nicola Bailey. Books I designed for them included Toilets of the World, which I understand is still their best seller.

It has to be working with Simon Garfield on his book Just My Type for Profile Books. He was a delight to work with but any time he wrote about a font he wanted it to be set in that font. So with advice from Stephen Coles at FontShop in San Francisco we set 200 fonts from Albertus to Zeppelin II into continuous text. And then provided the information for foreign editions. As well as designer I’m credited as font wrangler!

Many online buying decisions are made on first impressions so in that respect good design has become more valued. On the other hand those impressions are frequently made by viewing thumbnails only and marketing departments (with good reason) insist on a design that can be quickly understood at a small size. This can result in some less-than-subtle design. Much the same problem confronted album designers when CDs became the medium of choice, but after a while designers rose to the challenge and they will do so again.

The best thing is getting the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects ranging from the Russian space programme (Cosmonauts for the Science Museum) to poetry (Love Haiku for the British Museum). The worst? Sometimes not being involved early enough to be able to influence a project during development.