More, Please! 2025 Creativity Challenge

jrhrice
Aug 8
3 min read

[NOTE from Jan: When Rebecca recently sent me some mockups of her re-branding work to get feedback on which graphics and logos I liked best, it piqued my interest. I asked her if she’d be willing to take part in my creativity challenge and share the story of how she creates and why. She agreed. Please enjoy!]

My creative journey started when I was 17 and I was offered a partial scholarship to an art school. My stepfather would not pay for the tuition, saying girls didn’t need an education, I should just be a secretary. So, no college for me… It destroyed any confidence I had, both artistic and generally.

I married for the second time in 1983 and relocated to the UK. It was there that my creative journey started again. My husband was the only one with a work permit, so I took five years of art history classes with Cambridge University. I got to tour art galleries, museums and stately homes all over the UK, Europe and since Brock was Australian was able to visit galleries there as well.

When PageMaker and CorelDraw were first released, my lovely husband purchased both programs for me and I dived right in. He worked in IT and suggested I RTFM many times. (Translation: Read the F-ing Manual) Well, I didn't read the manual, just jumped right in. It could be very frustrating for both me and family members when I would rant about the computer ‘not doing what I want’. I can still hear Brock’s response: “It’s doing what you tell it to do.” But I got there in the end.

My first artistic love was watercolors. Yet I found myself setting such a high standard for my work that when my first efforts weren’t perfect, it was too easy to just toss them in the trash. Even today, when I pick up a brush, I’m still quite tentative. Part of what I love about being artistic on the computer is that I can hit delete, undo or just not save the creation, something that isn’t possible with brush and canvas.

My book formatting/typesetting/design journey started in 2007 when a friend asked me to help her with her memoir. We bumbled through, learning so much along the way. She was pleased, we learned together, and another memoir followed. Then a novel, poetry books, self-help, a children’s book… I was on my way.

Today I have designed 50-plus books in just about every genre there is – book covers and interiors for authors who want to self-publish their book whether it be for putting out there on Amazon or just a few copies for family. It is such a joy to turn somebody's hard work into something beautiful that people want to read. It has become my main creative outlet.

It may not look creative, but technical things like figuring out leading (space between lines), kerning (space between letters), and choosing the font style and size get my creative juices flowing.

Even though both paragraphs contain the same text in the same size font, it is easy to see how one is much easier on the eye. No one wants to read a book that gives them a headache!

My advice as a graphic designer/book formatter to a writer is: just write! It doesn’t matter if you space twice or six times; hit return once or if your cat steps on the keyboard and you get a page of returns! InDesign, one of the most widely used formatting programs, has a very steep learning curve, but it is so powerful it can delete extra spaces or returns in moments. The same applies if you decide to change the name of your main character from James to Jessica!

Book covers are the really fun part – they combine my love of art with the ability to easily hit undo or delete. Here are three of my favorites.