Rejoice series book covers for Loyola Press and my 20th anniversary of being an illustrator!

This year a new series of books from Loyola Press have joined their lineup of education titles, and I had the pleasure of illustrating the covers! The series is called Rejoice, and it’s a collection of books for kids’ religious education. I illustrated seven or so covers for this series, as well as a couple of illustrations that formed part of the fun sample box that was sent out to potential customers. My art director, Jill Arena, was just as lovely and easy to work with as all of the folks at Loyola Press have always been, and she made this project that much more enjoyable.

It’s auspicious timing to share this project because this month marks the 20th anniversary of my starting up as a full-time illustrator (having previously been a graphic designer), and Loyola Press was my first-ever illustration client! Prior to 2006 I had worked my illustrations into lots of graphic design projects for all sorts of clients (anyone who would let me, really!), but when I quit the graphic design world and struck out on my own illustrating full-time, Loyola Press was the first company who hired me. This was partly down to my having an “in” with my dear friend Adam, who hired me first to illustrate a little narrative book about Christmas that Loyola published. After that I created lots of spot illustrations and covers for various educational books that Loyola produced, and it was such a positive entry into the world of illustrating because all of my contacts at Loyola were always so upbeat, friendly, kind and patient.

Flash forward 20 years, and while my illustration style and process has changed loads since the early projects I worked on for Loyola, nothing has changed in terms of the wonderful people who work there. I had a lovely time creating these covers under Jill’s direction, most of which feature lots of school kids doing various things, plus a few scenes of families. All of this was super fun to work on, as I’ve been building up my people-centric portfolio and really enjoyed capturing all of the fun and exuberance of childhood with these kids. I loved implementing the color palette that Loyola created for the series, which meshed perfectly with my own penchant for bright, happy hues, as well as filling the backgrounds with my signature patterns. 

I also love how the designers at Loyola pulled out elements from the illustrations to use in their marketing, which you can see here on the main Rejoice series page, and even brought some of them to live via animation, which you can see here in a cute video they shared on Facebook. So a big thank you to Jill and all of the others at Loyola for working with me on this series, and thanks to all of the clients who have hired me over the last 20 years and made my career possible. I love what I do for a living, and I’m so lucky that I get to draw pictures every day and call it work. Thanks for reading, and I hope I get to do this for another 20 years and tell you all about it!