We were lucky to catch up with Aarushi Menon recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Aarushi, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I began my creative learning journey as an aspiring illustrator! I always loved drawing and knew from a young age that I wanted to pursue a career in the arts. My school offered art classes from elementary through high school, and I enthusiastically participated in them in pursuit of my future goals. In my teens, my parents gifted me a Wacom tablet, which I used to practice digital drawing and explore different art software (I used Sketchbook Pro on my home computer, and learned Adobe software at school). From a career perspective, I specifically practiced with the intention of illustrating children’s books or becoming a concept artist for animation and games.

In college, I eventually switched my focus to graphic design to broaden my future career opportunities. However, the heavy lifting I had done through my illustration training made it easier to integrate typography, photography, and collaging into my existing artistic skillset via formal college classes.

This may sound cliché, but practice and output were the only ways to make the concepts I’d learned in class stick. Outside of class assignments, I accelerated my learning process by working on personal projects. One that I’ve mentioned in previous interviews is my 365-day poster design challenge. I also created zines, package designs, and book covers, which led me directly to my future career…

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I currently work as a designer at Penguin Random House (PRH), where I design book covers and jackets. I initially learned about this career path through my college job portal, where I stumbled upon a listing for PRH’s summer internship program in book cover design. As a lifelong lover of reading, I was immediately enamored with the idea of designing covers for a living and decided to focus on applying for jobs in the publishing industry.

To strengthen my applications for these design positions, I filled my portfolio with sample book covers and reached out to industry professionals on LinkedIn and Instagram for advice. Through this outreach, I eventually connected with Cassie Vu at Random House, who became my mentor and taught me how to apply my graphic design skills to the book cover format.

Six months into my mentorship, I landed a full-time role as a designer in the Random House art department. Now, I spend my days figuring out how to create the best cover to effectively convey a book’s various themes and story elements, aiming to follow genre conventions while still allowing the cover to stand out on the shelf. I think I’m most proud when I’m able to strike that balance and come up with a cover that makes both the author and the in-house team happy, as well as create excitement among prospective readers.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

FontsInUse.com is a beautifully curated website showcasing hundreds of fonts in situ. The projects featured on the site are meticulously organized by tags that separate them by format, era, location, font type, and more. When a project calls for me to evoke a particular time period or setting, I like to explore the FontsInUse catalog for inspiration.

Another site I love is INeedABookCover.com, a collection of book covers by industry designers. The layout of the website is clean and intuitive, and the covers themselves are categorized by typographic style, image treatment, color, etc. I discovered this site during my job hunt and found it to be a great way to find new designers to follow.

Having all of this inspirational content at my fingertips has had a really positive impact on my learning journey. These sites, among others, helped me build my aesthetic sensibilities and taste during my most formative training years (and I wish I’d had them even earlier!). The mixture of awe and envy I feel when I see amazing art continues to serve as a motivational force for me on my ongoing creative journey.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Speaking specifically to my work in publishing, I’m driven by my lifelong passion for reading. I’ve always loved reading fantasy and adventure books; as a child, I could spend hours escaping into fictional worlds. And it wasn’t just the act of reading that I loved. From the friendly librarians I met at school to the chaotic book fandoms I joined online, the connections formed around books and reading have been a constant source of comfort for me. I now truly enjoy being part of a process that shares reading—and the joys of its communities—with others.

In terms of my future goals, I want to continue learning as much as I can about tangible design applications like packaging, editorial, signage, environmental branding, and more. There’s so much to discover in the world of design, and I’ve barely scratched the surface!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://aarushimenon.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aarushimenon.dsgn/

Image Credits

Portrait photograph: Cassie Vu
All The Mothers cover illustration: Joel Burden
The Geomagician cover illustration: Armando Veve