Ian Winton Book Design: My Community, Safety First, Franklin Watts

6 covers from each series.

About me

I have worked in children’s publishing for over 30 years, after graduating from Middlesex Polytechnic (now University) in 1984. I started out as a freelance paper engineer and designer for Octopus Books in London. After working on several projects I was taken on as an in house designer and employed in the childrens and fiction department full time. At Octopus I worked on a whole range of novelty books, licenced character series, paper engineering projects, reference books and jackets for adult fiction titles.

I left Octopus in 1987 and went to Dorling Kindersley where I worked on various titles, including gardening, health and fitness and food and drink.

I left DK in 1988, went freelance and moved to Shropshire. Keeping in touch with my contacts in London and Bath I worked for quite a few publishers and book packagers and split my time fairly evenly between design, paper engineering and illustration. After 4 or 5 years I began to work predominantly in book design and since then have worked for over 40 UK and US publishers on a very wide range of titles from simple board books to encyclopedias for teenagers.

From December 2010 until August 2012 I worked part time with the Design Team at Cornwall's Eden Project, although I am still retained on a part time zero hours contract. I have worked on an extremely broad range of projects, from simple directional signage to complex Photoshop diagrams and from lively informative posters to brochures to accompany fundraising events.