Meeting with Sheri Safran

Whilst in London I met with an art director called Sheri Safran. She commissions illustrators for Tango books who specialise in children’s novelty books. I first tried contacting her by phoning up but I got through to a receptionist who said I should send some work. This was the response I got from a lot of book publishers as it seems they will not meet unless they have seen samples of your work. So I sent out emails to a numbers of art directors with my attached PDF, most of which I didn’t get any response from. Sheri Safran got back in touch saying she could meet on Tuesday afternoon. I went to the studios in Chiswick and had a meeting with Sheri whilst she looked through my portfolio. She was very encouraging and said she liked my work. As the company specialize in novelty books she shown me examples of books they have published in the past. She said she could see my style working for the sort of novelty books they specialize in but as I didn’t have any novelty work in my portfolio there wasn’t enough for her justify making any commissions. Tango books are keen to publish more unusual children’s books where the style will appeal to the parents as well as children, Sheri thinks my work will fall into this category. I went on to tell her that my next project would be based upon Japanese fairytales so I’m including elements of origami and paper engineering, and although she is looking to publish more common fairytales she said she would like to see what I produce. So if this project goes well I will email her more examples of my work. Tango books also have their own paper engineers who concentrate purely on the pop-up elements so this is something which the illustrators do not have to worry too much about, but the examples she shown me which worked best had paper engineering designed by the illustrator, they seemed to incorporate the illustrations into the pop up elements more creatively. I think that getting work published with tango books would be a great way of getting a foot in the door as Sheri Safran takes trips to children’s book fairs, like Bologna, to promote the books and the illustrators.