Ness Wood
Co-Founder and Tutor
Ness is an award-winning Art Director and designer who works on picture books and fiction, from young fiction to YA and also poetry. She has worked for many major national and international publishers. Her wide-ranging accomplishments in practical design with qualifications in design history serve as a solid foundation for her work. She is known for her encouraging, straightforward and collaborative approach with illustrators and students. Whatever stage you are at in your design or illustration career, Ness can help you move your project forwards, whether it be a picture book, fiction or your portfolio.
Ness’s design skills include taking a book from concept to printed object through collaboration, scheduling and working through all design decisions required. She can create picture book and fiction cover ideas and take the fear out of typographical decision making. Ness works with text and image and laying out the insides of a book, thinking about composition, balance, scale and, of course, the page turn!
Ness has been a judge for the prestigious Bologna Ragazzi Award, Bologna Book Fair, in 2018 was part of the winning team at the British Design and Production Awards, in the Graphic Novel Category and recently a judge for the CBNN Illustration Prize 2026.
Ness has taught at several Universities, including Goldsmiths, ULAN and Brighton and ran the Cambridge School of Art Summer School 2017-2022. She gives lectures on children’s book illustration, design, publishing - these are online and in person.
Ness has had much success with Orange Beak clients through her tutorials, whether they be about cover design, text and image layout or portfolio editing. Clients have gone on to get publishing agents, book deals and international as well as UK based interest in their work.
Photo by Beth Lynton-Jenkins
