My design career has taken me from the wonderfully specific to the decidedly generic, Graphic Design, am I right…right?

One of the most significant and long-running creative relationships of my career began in a rather unexpected way. In the early days of bestselling Australian author Matthew Reilly's career, my good friend Ché Baker brought me on board to help Matt turn the opening ten minutes of his first novel, CONTEST, into a proof-of-concept film. Matt himself played the lead character, and while the project never became the feature film we initially imagined, it was the beginning of a creative relationship that has continued for more than a decade.

After working with Matt on various projects over the following years, I was brought in for The Great Zoo of China in 2014. From there, I've gone on to create story-specific internal illustrations, technical diagrams, maps, endpapers and inside-cover artwork, as well as designing most of the covers for his novels through to the present day. The work is particularly rewarding because every illustration has to serve the story—whether that's explaining a complex piece of technology, a deadly trap, mapping an imaginary location, visualising a creature or helping build the world inside the reader's head.

Alongside the more specialised work, I've also spent plenty of time doing what could generously be described as "normal graphic design." Brochures, corporate material, logos, Movie Posters, layouts, promotional artwork and all the other assorted jobs that occasionally arrive with the words "Can you just quickly put something together?" It's given me a broad understanding of typography, layout, branding, print production and the practical realities of designing work that actually needs to be produced and used and at least considered, regardless of how un-considered it might usually be.

I've also had a long-running creative relationship with Mighty Car Mods, designing most—but not quite all—of the merchandise sold through their online store. I'm particularly proud of the T-shirt designs that have become recognisable among the MCM community and are now worn by fans around the world.

Whether it's a highly detailed map buried inside a novel, a book cover sitting on a shelf, a logo on a sticker or a T-shirt being worn at a car meet, I enjoy the challenge of making graphic design that has a purpose, tells a story and—ideally—makes someone want to look at it twice.