Literaticast Q&A

I was recently a guest on Jennifer Laughran’s podcast Literaticast. Ahead of recording, she shared her questions. To prepare, I wrote my answers. Jenn provides episode transcripts, but this version makes for a nice textual interview, so I’m publishing it!

Jennifer Laughran: I introduced you a bit before you hopped on, but could you do me a favor and introduce YOURSELF, and give us the nutshell version of how you came to children’s publishing?

Brian LaRossa: Sure! My name is Brian LaRossa, I’m an executive art director at Scholastic, where I’ve worked for 20 years. I oversee our Branches and Acorn imprints which are beginning graphic readers and illustrated chapter books, I also oversee our younger nonfiction series, and a good number of stand alone fiction and nonfiction picture books for our Orchard imprint. All in all, my team releases approximately 52 books each year.

In a nutshell, I went to MICA for undergrad and graduate school, studying editorial illustration and digital art, and then bounced around odd jobs for a couple of years before moving to Brooklyn. I started working for Scholastic pretty soon after arriving and began as a designer in the education division, working on a variety of books, products, and programs for elementary school administrators, teachers, and students. 15 years later I was the design director of our professional books imprint, our family and community engagement products, and our learning supports programs. Then I made the switch to the trade division, where I work now.

JL: We’re going to get into some more specifics soon, but just for the general public who might not really know — what exactly does an Art Director DO? And what are the different roles within the art department? (designer? etc? I don’t even know!)

BLR: I field this question a lot! I like to use a filmmaking analogy. It’s not perfect but the general public does seem to have a better grasp on the roles in filmmaking, so it helps to build a bridge.

• A book editor is roughly equivalent to a film producer.
• A book art director is roughly equivalent to a film director.
• A book designer is roughly equivalent to a film editor.
• A book author is roughly equivalent to a film screenwriter.
• A book illustrator is roughly equivalent to a film actor, set designer, cinematographer, and a million other jobs lol.

Art director can be a confusing job title. In some industries, like advertising, it’s often framed as an entry level position. In book publishing it means design manager. There are some stand alone art directors in the industry, but most art directors are managing a team of book designers. In terms of my responsibilities I…

• direct the work of in-house, and freelance, book designers.
• select illustrators for new books.
• direct the work of those illustrators.
• define the visual strategy for each book.
• ensure that each book’s interior serves the story and meets the needs of readers.
• ensure that each book’s cover is engaging, competitive, and memorable.
• build and managing schedules.
• oversee the preparation of files for the printer.
• approve printer proofs.

Most art directors don’t do this, but I also negotiate illustrator contracts. And I am also a business partner, taking part in imprint-level, strategic conversations with our editorial, marketing, and sales teams.

Within a book publishing art department the roles that are charged with designing, or supporting the design, of books are:

• design assistant
• junior designer
• designer
• senior designer
• associate art director

The roles that are charged with overseeing departmental operations and managing the designers are:

• art director
• senior/executive art director
• creative director
• VP, creative director

JL: This might be a dumb question but, what percentage of your work day-to-day is what one might call artistic vs technical (vs admin, I guess!)

BLR: Not dumb at all! In my view it’s all creative. Even when I’m not designing a book myself, I’m designing the conditions for creating books, and shaping the work of the illustrators and designers who are creating them. In terms of how much time I spend actually designing books myself, versus my other responsibilities, I would say, at this point, that I spend about 10% of my time designing. I’ve designed, and/or directed the design of, over a thousand books so I’m a pretty strong cover designer. When I do design something myself it tends to be a book cover.

JL: We were chatting at a retreat recently, and I’m paraphrasing, but you said something like, “design is not decoration. rather, it’s absolutely fundamental to what makes a book, a book.” Generally speaking, do you think that people understand or value how much a book, even a non-illustrated book, is design? And further, what do you wish that people — in or out of the publishing house — knew about the designer’s role?

BLR: I did say that precisely, “design is not decoration.” I often say this to my students; I teach a course on design criticism at CCNY every Spring and Fall semester. I try to impress upon them that design is not about making things look nice; it’s about making things look like themselves. It’s a process of self-actualization.

Here’s an example: I’m a member of the Park Slope Food Coop. We get great local eggs. One day I was buying eggs and I was struck by the generic packaging. An unbranded carton with a little white sticker that had the name and address of the farm on it and then a hand written expiration date. My first impulse was to write the farmer to offer my freelance services, to redesign their packaging. I wanted to make it look nicer! That impulse was quickly followed by the realization that there is NOTHING that I could do to make those eggs look more local. The handwriting on the label is a profound mark of care. Making it look nicer would also make it look less authentic; less like itself.

With regards to how much of a book is shaped by design, and with this idea that design is a process of self-actualization in mind, let’s circle back to the filmmaking analogy and use the film E.T. as an example. If every aspect of E.T. remained the same—script, actors, crew, etc.—but, instead of Steven Spielberg, let’s make the director Stanley Kubrick, and let’s swap out the film’s editor too. Nobody would ever expect those two versions of E.T. to be the same. Everybody would understand that those two changes — the director and editor — would produce a completely different film. Changing the art director and designer has the same impact on a book.

JL: With regards to picture books specifically, how can design choices shape the story and reading experience?

BLR: Changing a book’s typography changes the book’s voice. This is especially true when the typography is expressive, as is often the case with picture books, but this is also true when a book’s typography is restrained.

Then there’s the question of the trim, materials, binding, case, flaps, endpapers, front matter, back matter, and effects. Change the way these things are handled and you change the character of a book.

Art direction is a discipline that is separate from book design but it does also blur the line between the two. Many of the edits I ask illustrators to make have to do with the rhythm and flow of a book. Going back to the filmmaking analogy I often ask illustrators to consider the POV—the way the “camera” frames the story from page to page. Sometimes I need them to move things to make room for the typography. I also ask for edits that relate specifically to strengthening the visual storytelling.

JL: I think it would be fair to say that typography, and in particular the role of type in literacy instruction, is something you have a lot of feelings about. You have a great essay about it on your website which I’ll link to in the show notes. I happen to have a particular pet peeve when it comes to typography in picture books and early readers specifically that happens all the time: I can’t STAND it when the text is black on a muddy or otherwise overly-dark image, or when the font is too “weird”/curly/cursive-ish in a book for emerging readers — like, I’m all for challenging kids with the content of picture books, but the words themselves HAVE TO BE LEGIBLE ENOUGH FOR A CHILD TO READ, otherwise what the heck are we doing? So you are an actual expert on this: What are YOUR typographical pet peeves, and what can we be doing better when it comes to supporting emerging readers through design choices?

BLR: Maintaining figure/ground contrast is everything! It matters in illustration when the figure is a character in the story. It matters in typography when the figure is a letterform. Designers complain about receiving vague feedback like “make it pop!” and in response, inexperienced designers will add outlines and drop shadows to their typography, but outlines and drop shadows can’t save the readability of light yellow text against a white ground.

When it comes to typography and children’s books, reading experiences need to be shaped in response to the needs of readers. If we’re talking about picture books the reader is an adult; a family member, caregiver, librarian, or teacher. If it’s a commercial, comedic book you’ll want to make the typography expressive, but you’re also basically following the same typographic best practices that you would follow if you were typesetting a website, airport signage, or food packaging.

If we’re talking about beginning readers, illustrated chapter books, graphic novels, the reader is a child, and more than that they are an emerging reader. Now we’ve wandered into the realm of leveled texts, and so we’ve wandered into the realm of education. The best practices are completely different. Leveled reading is a very deep well. I do think the essay on my website is a good primer. When I was a design director in Scholastic’s education division I also developed a set of leveled typesetting guidelines, which were created in partnership with professional levelers. Those two documents are a good starting point for anyone who is interested in learning more.

JL: So, I don’t know about you, but I have gotten a number of queries clearly done with AI art, and they are SO BAD that it’s sincerely troubling that anyone thought they should send them to me — so I’m not really worried that my artists are going to be replaced by AI. BUT. I do understand that some authors and artists might feel like there is an existential crisis underway where robots are coming for their jobs. What do YOU think about it?

BLR: When it comes to writing and illustration, In book publishing if we can’t own it, we can’t sell it. Current copyright laws make text and imagery that’s wholly generated by AI un-copyrightable. AI companies are going to lobby congress to change the copyright laws, and if they succeed we will have a real problem. All the creative industries need to hold hands and make a strong case against changing the copyright laws.

These legal protections do not apply to designers.

On the one hand you could say designers are facing a legitimate existential crisis. On the other hand graphic designers have faced one existential crisis after another since W.A. Dwiggins coined the term “graphic designer” in 1922.

I show my students this fantastic short film from 1978 about the last day that the New York Times used Linotype machines to typeset the newspaper using hot metal type. The film ends with a Linotype machine operator walking out of the dark Linotype room and into the bright digital typesetting room where designers are using proto typesetting software and cold pasteup to layout the newspaper for the first time.

That night several of the Linotype machine operators retired, and I imagine a number of them may have switched professions, but many of the designers in the bright digital typesetting room were former Linotype machine operators.

I get that the AI paradigm shift isn’t precisely the same. Still, I believe studying history is key to understanding the present, and to plotting a viable path forward.

JL: From an agent perspective, we often don’t work much with the Art Department even if we rep illustrators. While my illustrators DO work closely with the AD, my own point of contact is almost always the editor. For that reason, I’m wild with curiosity — and maybe it is different by project (or by publisher) — but from your perspective: do the editors consult with anyone in the art department before they acquire a picture book? If it is a text-only project, like a picture book text for example, what role does the art department play in choosing an illustrator?

BLR: There are instances when editors acquire a project with a strong preference for a particular illustrator but generally it’s my job to match manuscripts with the right illustrator. This has very little to do with my own personal preferences. Instead, it’s about selecting artists who are appropriate to both the manuscript and the market segment. In terms of the competitive landscape the challenge is you want an artist with a style that simultaneously fits in and stands out.

So then the editor shares the manuscript with the art director, and the art director curates a selection of two or three illustrators who would be a good fit, and who would also be good backups for one another, because your first choice isn’t always available. The editor and art director then present those options to leadership, marketing, sales, and finance, and if there are no concerns, an offer is made to the illustrator at the top of the list. Editors often handle the offer and negotiation process. In my case, I make my own offers, and negotiate my own contracts.

JL: How do you choose an illustrator, or what are your go-to moves for finding new illustrators?

BLR: I lean heavily on social media for discovery. I posted on Twitter daily for fifteen years. I used to post open calls there to kick off my discovery process. I would describe the project in detail and ask kid lit illustrators to respond with samples from their portfolio. In addition to finding emerging, often un-agented, illustrators, agents would also email me in response with curated samples from their rosters.

Posting open calls in this way is simply about symbiosis. It lowers the barriers to entry into children’s book publishing. It’s an effective way to find new artists. It’s the most efficient way for me to pull together project specific samples for internal presentations.

In December of 2023 I quit Twitter. In the months leading up to quitting I was helping to distribute Bluesky invite codes to the kid lit community. Many people were sending me their codes and I was redistributing them to others. All in all I distributed roughly 700 Bluesky invite codes to the kid lit community.

Invite codes are no longer required to join Bluesky and thanks to the efforts of brilliant people like Debbie Ridpath Ohi the kid lit community is currently thriving there. I also recently had a conversation with someone on Bluesky’s leadership team and they assured me that attracting and supporting the kid lit community is one of their top priorities right now.

JL: Can you give a couple recent examples of illustrators you found via social media that really caught your eye, and what about them was so eye-catching?

BLR: Sure thing!

• Francesca Mahaney is the illustrator of a new Branches series titled The Inside Scouts. I’m pretty sure I found her work in response to one of my open calls. She has a distinct style that really strikes the perfect balance between fitting in and standing out.
• Kalen Chock is the illustrator of the picture book Caves, and the forthcoming follow up Volcanoes. I didn’t find his work via an open call, but I did find it on social. He had been working in films and gaming, and had never done a picture book before Caves, but his work is just stunning, especially his use of light and his ability to capture scale. At first glance I knew his work was a perfect fit!

JL: What do you think is important for illustrators to include in their online portfolios — is there anything you WISH they would include, or that they often FORGET to include?

BLR: Broken down to its core elements, visual storytelling is primarily about showing characters interacting with emotion in places. I often see portfolios that primarily feature characters standing in a white void. If that’s your happy place, character design is a real and rewarding profession. I also see portfolios that primarily feature places without any characters. If that’s your happy place, background painting is a real and rewarding profession. If you’re interested in telling stories, we need all three: characters, emotion, places.

Consistency is also key. I find “style” to be a vague word. Instead I like to use the word “Universe.” I’m not against illustrators featuring more than one style, but you need 9–12 pieces portraying scenes that all feel like they’re happening in the same universe. You have to handle categories of things—for example architecture, eyes, and foliage—in consistent ways that feel stable. If the physics of your universe breaks down, it can push the reader out.

JL: Piggybacking off that, what are some common mistakes illustrators make with their websites / portfolios / social?

BLR: When I mentor illustrators for We Need Diverse Books we meet weekly for months covering all the details of this. I also used to teach a portfolio course in the design department at CUNY City Tech. If I were to boil all the best practices down to three bullets they would be:

• Present yourself consistently across all your sites and accounts. View it as a singular presentation. If you want to see an example of this, take a look at the way I employ blue and red across my own sites and accounts.
• Use your website to tell your whole story with your whole heart. I’m a big fan of bios that have I’m from, I believe, and I love statements. Especially when you’re just starting out. That said, you’ll notice my bio is pretty much just the facts, but at this stage of my career I think the facts speak to what I believe and love.
• This one maybe goes without saying, but remember that when you post on social media that it is public, and people are reading your posts even when they’re not liking them. This is especially important to remember for any account that’s connected to your professional practice.

JL: So, the illustrator has been signed up and you’re working with them — can we unpack that a little? I assume there are A LOT of big and little design decisions that have to be made, from trim size to typeface to pagination and how the text is laid out on the page, all the way to whether the cover will have glitter or the case will be embossed — so who does what? and how much of the design of the book is from the artist, and how much from you? What does the process look like?

BLR: The illustrator is responsible for illustrating the story. The art director and designer are responsible for designing the book. That means every aspect of that book’s typography and layout. That includes the design of every page of the story, in addition to the front matter, back matter, jacket, case, flaps, and endpapers. We’re also responsible for the physical aspects of a book like the trim size, materials, and effects. Of course, similar to a film’s director and producer, book art directors collaborate closely with editors on many of these decisions.

In terms of unpacking how I work with an illustrator, I run a tight four pass schedule. That’s sketches, revised sketches, finished art, revised finished art. There are of course a few small polishing rounds at the end, but I frame those as preparing for release.

Before the 1P—the sketch pass—we create a pre-layout. A pre-layout is the copyedited manuscript, poured into what will be the final mechanical. We use the pre-layout to begin playing with the typography and pagination, and to give the illustrator a sense of the book. It shows them where the text will hit, the size and aspect ratio of the pages, the layout of the front and back matter, and in the case of beginning graphic readers and illustrated chapter books we also provide very detailed art specifications which describe what needs to be drawn and precisely how big each piece of art should be. The illustrator uses the pre-layout to create the sketches.

I love it when an illustrator takes lettering seriously and is good at it. In those cases I’ll invite them to letter the title, and sometimes the headings in the back matter, but I then also provide a ton of support and feedback with regards to the letterforms and letter spacing.

While we’re on the subject I’ll note that lettering is not typography. Typography is writing with prefabricated characters, AKA a typeface. Lettering is the art of drawing letters. Related: typefaces are not fonts. A typeface is what you see. A font is what you use.

JL: Are you ever surprised by an illustrator incorporating some design element, motif or detail that you never would have thought of?

BLR: Yes! Similarly, I encourage the designers on my team to self-identify as business partners. I do love it when illustrators self-identify as design partners. At the end of the day book publishing is a team sport. The strongest books are born from partnerships where everyone involved checks their ego, and brings their all to every detail.

JL: One of my favorite things ON EARTH is when there are little design “easter eggs” in a book — like when you take off the cover and realize that the case is embossed in a special way, or there is a secret second image on the case, or when there are decorations in the margins of a novel that become animated like a flip book — what have been some of your favorite design easter eggs?

BLR: I LOVE designing a case cover that is not a replica of the jacket! Books are allowed to have different outfits! There are cases when it’s more appropriate to have them match, but for a beautiful, lyrical, picture book: it’s the best. I also love it when the endpapers tell a story. When I was working on Bessie The Motorcycle Queen by Charles R. Smith Jr. and Charlot Kristenson we picked up on the coin flip, which is a key part of the story. The endpapers are a kind of flip book of a coin flip, with the coin poised in the hand when you open the book, and with it flipping through the air at the end.

JL: Are there things that you have to remind even seasoned illustrators about often? (I’m thinking a lot of “mind the gutter” must happen, no?)

BLR: Yes!

• Please do mind the gutter AND provide bleed! Books are physical objects.
• Please don’t deliver your art as jpegs! Jpegs are lossy, meaning they aren’t archival.
• Please don’t deliver RGB art. Books are printed using CMYK. RGB describes color as light. CMYK describes color as ink. Every CMYK color can be replicated with RGB. Not every RGB color can be replicated with CMYK. So, if you fall in love with art that was created in RGB, you will be disappointed when you see it printed in CMYK. RGB always prints duller in CMYK, but brightness can be maintained in CMYK if that brightness is engineered in CMYK from the start.

JL: Beyond the art itself, are there qualities that some illustrators share that make you want to work with them again and again?

BLR: I LOVE working with illustrators who are kind, detail oriented, and communicative. Nothing causes me more anxiety during the book development process than radio silence.

JL: What advice would you give to a person who wants to have a job like yours in the art department?

BLR: If you want a job like mine I recommend you:

• Study typography with rigor. People underestimate how much there is to learn. You can spend a lifetime striving to master it. When your typography skills are strong it is THE super power when it comes to book design.
• Find an in-house job designing books on a good-sized team of talented people who are willing to teach you things. MUCH easier said than done, I know. Still, do everything you can to find this. If you’re able to find a seat on a team like this, stay there, be curious, ask questions, listen, have fun, work hard, and be patient.
• Once you land your first art director job, the most important thing you can do is lead with kindness. Don’t get me wrong the goal is absolutely excellence. It has to be. The market is fiercely competitive. But, you can’t achieve excellence by leading your team with fear. It very simply doesn’t work, and here’s why: if your team is scared to fail they will not experiment; if your team doesn’t experiment they will not innovate; if your team doesn’t innovate they will not achieve excellence.

JL: BOOK PROMOTION CORNER! I don’t want to make you play favorites or anything — But do you have any new or upcoming books you want to plug?

BLR: Yes! I would love to plug four of my upcoming titles. All of these will be released this Summer and Fall. Please help these authors and illustrators by pre-ordering their books today!

• Volcanoes by Nell Cross Beckerman and Kalen Chock
• The Light of Home by Diana Farid and Hoda Hadidi
• Disaster Squad #1: Wildfire Rescue by Rekha Rajan and Courtney Lovett
• Kwame’s Magic Quest #2: Race to the Magic Mountain by Bernard Mensah and Natasha Nayo

JL: Finally, everyone’s favorite question: What are you obsessed with right now? It does NOT have to be bookish, but it can be. I’ll go first so you have time to think! (I’ll probably talk about how I’m obsessed with sprayed edges on novels!)

BLR: Oh, I’m a deeply obsessive person lol! Since July of 2020 I’ve been obsessed with writing fiction (contemporary realism for adults). So far I’ve finished writing two novels and twenty six short stories. I’m a quarter of the way through a third novel and always have at least one new story in the works. I perpetually keep my work out on sub to literary agents, magazines, and journals.