Today is a sad day for us in the Crow’s Nest.
Our much-loved (by illustrators as well as us) head of design, Stephanie Amster, is leaving us to join Bloomsbury Children’s Books as Creative Director.
Steph was the seventh member of the Nosy Crow team, joining us way back in the autumn of 2010. Since then, she’s managed the design of all of our full-colour publishing while sprinkling her extraordinary design magic on the picture books she’s worked on. We couldn’t be more grateful to her, and we know that, commercially and creatively, we will feel the impact of Steph’s work for years to come: one of the great things about publishing is that, pace Shakespeare, the good that editors and designers do lives after them in the books they’ve helped authors and illustrators to make.
She leaves us on 22 July, and we will, of course, say a proper goodbye to her, but, for now, while we wish her the best of luck in her glamorous new role, we are allowed, I think, to be sad.
The cheery thing is that she leaves behind her a really excellent design team – the strongest that I’ve ever worked with in the business, actually. And I’ve had such lovely and reassuring responses to the emails I’ve been sending out to the many illustrators and authors and agents that we’ve had to break the news to this morning, with many commenting on the strength not just of the design team, but of the way that, as a publisher, we support the creative people we have the privilege of working with. My favourite so far is, “Rest assured… Nosy Crow is a high-five and a hug all wrapped up in one!”
Onwards and, as they say, upwards.
