Tag Archives: designer

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Phoenix Fire – illustrator and designer

It is time to meet Ida van Os, our illustrator and designer. She has assisted me with a few different projects over the years and, again, she jumped right in when I realised that we need help.

Phoenix Fire - illustrator and designer

Ida van Os – Graphic designer extraordinaire!

She came up with a design that was so close to what I had envisioned, I could hardly believe she had done it from scratch in less than three days. We fixed a few small design elements (and several typos *cough cough* – those were my fault) and voilá! Behold the cover for Phoenix Fire!

PhoenixFire_1600x2560

About Ida

She is an experienced graphic design all-rounder, focusing on User Interface (UI)

Phoenix Fire - illustrator and designer

Watercolour – Ida van Os

and User Experience (UX) design. She is a strong arts and design professional with a BA (BK) Information Design, focused in Graphic Design from the University of Pretoria. Ida loves everything that has to do with the fluid process of creating mobile first solutions and apps. She strives to design solutions that answer to the users’ needs in the most intuitive form, packaged in elegant user interfaces.

Phoenix Fire - illustrator and designer

Pencil sketch – Ida van Os

Ida has over 20 years’ design experience with 18 years as an in-house designer and brand guardian in an engineering environment, working closely with business analysts and development teams, to create elegant, effective mobile and web solutions for consumer, government and corporate clients.

Ida’s hobbies

Ida likes to spend her free time on side-quests, doing any creative challenges or

Phoenix Fire - illustrator and designer

Ceramic art – Ida van Os

outdoor activities that inspire and expand the boundaries of her imagination. She believes that one should never stop dreaming, because without dreaming freely and without boundaries one cannot create with something of significant impact. One should also not just commit to one single hobby. Try everything once and try as many things as possible! For example, this year, Ida kept herself busy painting ceramic mugs and salad

bowls for friends, she learned how to brew and bottle beer, made a doodle series in pen and ink and is now venturing into needle point, making table cloths.

 

Phoenix Fire - illustrator and designer

Beer – Ida van Os

Greatest inspirations

Ida finds her greatest inspiration in traveling and experiencing new and interesting places. It doesn’t have to be an expensive overseas trip, just leave your comfort zone and travel through our country (South Africa, for those who assume some other country) and see how different and amazing life can be.

In the words of Mark Twain “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s lifetime.”
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The Flight of the Phoenix – Authors

Last but not least is HJ Kruger. I met this multi-talented artist/writer/designer during my university years. He is an absolutely fascinating creature and I have spent much time marvelling at his art (photography, paintings, stories, designs and more).

He has slaved away hours working on cover and banner designs for The Flight of the Phoenix and we are eternally grateful for his fantastic work.

Here is his interview:

How has your participation in The Flight of the Phoenix changed your approach to writing?
Let me start by saying what an amazing experience it’s been collaborating on this anthology. Flight of the phoenix taught me to be more focused in my writing and also to be more flexible. In developing a story specifically tailored for a publication I leaned to be receptive to constructive criticism and respect the creative process. The best thing of working on this project was the support and developmental feedback from the publisher, Siygrah Books, that always assured me that my story was in the best possible hands from the start.

Is writing a short story much different from screenwriting?
Screen writing is a lot more structured with a more defined format. The use of adverbs and inner dialogue, especially narration, is widely discouraged. Because a screenplay is never supposed to be a piece of literature by itself, it should rather be looked at as the creation of a blueprint that will guide and aid the filming process. When writing a short story I feel a lot freer to explore the minds of my characters and describe their inner realms, something that is sadly absent when you have to tell a story visually.

As the cover designer of the anthology, what was your biggest challenge?
The original image was a stunning hand-drawn image by Elsabé Viljoen; my biggest challenge was to reinvent the image to better suit the market and genre expectations and I think that the process was well worth it and yielded a image that both me and the publisher were happy with.

Get into contact with HJ Kruger:

https://www.facebook.com/hjkrugerwriter