Freelance Book Designer

About

Email Astred: hello@designcherry.com

NOTE THIS WEBSITE IS RARELY UPDATED, FOR MORE RECENT WORK VISIT 
@AstredHicksDesignCherry INSTAGRAM

Astred Hicks is a highly-awarded and best-selling Sydney-based, Australian book designer and illustrator whose distinctive work for Australian and international publishing houses includes fiction, non-fiction and educational, with a special emphasis on young adult fiction and children’s non-fiction.

She has lectured in graphic design and was the lead author of the popular text for tertiary students, Graphic design {Australian style manual}. She is a previous Vice President of the Australian Book Designers Association (ABDA).

In 2020 she spoke about the conceptual process of book design at Adobe MAX international creative conference.

Astred has won and been highly commended for numerous design awards during her 15-year career in publishing.

She is the illustrator of Exit Through the Gift Shop (Pan Macmillan) which has received a plethora of accolades in 2022 including Shortlisted in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, Highly Commended in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, Shortlisted in the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards, Shortlisted for The Australian Book Industry (ABIA) Awards and Highly Commended for the Best Designed Children’s Book award in the ABDA Australian Book Design Awards.

Astred was invited member of the Australian illustrator contingent represented in the Illustration Wall at Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2021.

“I pride myself on creating lovely books that answer my client’s briefs and the needs of their audience in creative, thoughtful and conceptual ways. I hand-draw type, scribble illustrations, source stock images and photographers, art direct photo shoots and push pixels around on screen until the final product is a thing of beauty.”

Some of the clients Astred has worked with include:

Affirm Press
Allen & Unwin
Andrew McMeel Publishing (USA)
CSIRO Publishing
Hachette Australia
Hardie Grant Books
Hardie Grant Egmont
Harlequin (Australia, North America, UK, Spain and France)
HarperCollins Australia
Loewe Verlag (Germany)
Murdoch Books
National Library of Australia
Oxford University Press
Pan Macmillan
Pantera Press
Peachtree Press (USA)
Pearson Education
Penguin Random House
Picador
Queensland University Press
Scholastic
Smith Street Press
Text Publishing
The Electric Canvas
The Jacky Winter Group
Univers Poche (France)
Walker Books (Australia and UK)