The Penguin Cover Design Award is a competition that runs every year for students and graduates. The challenge is to re-design the cover of a specific chosen book from three categories: non-fiction, fiction or children’s book.

The Penguin Design Award challenged me to redesign Dara McAnulty’s ‘Diary of a Young Naturalist’ in the non-fiction category. The book details the life of a teenage conservationist and naturalist living in Northern Ireland. Dara’s words come alive off the page, drawing from this evocative imagery in my design – they felt natural to visualise. I adored how Dara wrote about shape, colour and form within nature.

As an illustrator, I felt that we had a very similar way of viewing the world – poetic, abstract and open-minded.

The cover comprises watercolour illustrations of natural elements, colour swatches and notes alongside a tree trunk ‘spine’. It’s his observations that capture the magic of the outside world that make this cover what it is.

I’m absolutely thrilled to say that this design was shortlisted for this award and have re-submitted this design ready for the last stage of the competition.