Ten design questions is a newly launched interview series where Think asks designers working across all sectors about design and things they like. We ask for quick-fire answers to questions we've all wanted to know more about from our favourite designers, and they reply with their knee-jerk design likes and loves. Easy.
For our second interview, we fired ten design questions at Anna Rebecca Morrison – a designer and art director who specialises in book cover design. Her covers are characterised by bold typography and colours that live somewhere in between primary and pastel. They vary between romantically painterly and economically illustrative, and each is its own feast for the book-lover's eye. These are her ten design questions.
Question 01
What is your favourite piece of design that you have not created?
I adore everything that Saul Steinberg ever created, but I’m particularly in love with his cover for 'Design and Paper No. 30' from c. 1948.
Question 02
What is your favourite piece of design that you have created?
[My cover for 'The Girls'] is okay I feel, but it wasn’t used!
Unused cover for The Girls by Chloe Higgins (for Pan Mac Aus), Anna Rebecca Morrison
Question 03
Who is your greatest inspiration within the design world?
Saul Steinberg, Paul Rand, and I think Bráulio Amado’s work is pretty incredible.
Question 04
Who is your greatest inspiration outside of the design world?
I find Tacita Dean's work very inspiring and emotive.
Question 05
How do you cure ‘designer’s block’?
Ploughing on through or wine...
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, for Legend Press, June 2018, Anna Rebecca Morrison
Women by Chloe Caldwell published March 2018 by 4th Estate, Anna Rebecca Morrison
Question 06
How long did it take you to ‘make it’ as a designer?
Not sure I would constitute having “made it”, but it's always super to be commissioned.
Question 07
If you weren’t a designer, what other profession would you pursue?
Art therapist.
Question 08
What is your favourite object in your home?
100% this mad portrait I bought off ebay.
Anna Rebecca Morrison's mad, eBay portrait purchase
Question 09
What do you want to learn more about?
Literally everything! Also my techinical (computer skills) could do with a re-boost!
Question 10
What’s the best career-related advice you’ve ever received?
Keep on truckin’, you’ll get there eventually.
Anna Rebecca Morrison is a UK-based freelance art director, designer and sometime illustrator. She works mainly in publishing, designing book covers for a variety of clients in the UK and internationally.
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