If you’re not a designer (and typography nerd) you might not have heard of the Type Directors Club. The TDC is based in NYC, but holds the most prestigious international typography competition every year. The TDC is a great organization and it holds seminars and talks all year, as well as bestow student scholarships. There’s a great archive of talks and videos on their youtube channel. Every year the TDC also holds a Book Nite, where 3 book designers share the stage and talk about their work. This year, the speakers were Ingsu Liu (Executive Art Director, VP at Norton), Grace Han (Associate Art Director at Riverhead/Random House), and me (Creative Director, VP at Orbit/Hachette), organized by Chris Sergio (Art Director, VP at Portfolio/Penguin). Since many of you are interested in bookcover design and especially in illustrating bookcovers, I thought you’d like to see the talk.

Each presenter had 15-20min to talk about their work, and then there was a roundtable moderated by Chris. Ingsu & Grace tend towards the more literary end of the fiction spectrum, and Chris works on nonfiction and business. I was honored to be the very first Science Fiction/Fantasy designer to be asked to participate in Book Nite history! Remember, we are speaking to an audience almost exclusively of bookcover designers, so there might be some trade knowledge and more than a few industry in-jokes you might miss, but most of it should translate well to the audience here.

Enjoy!