Australian jeweller George Plionis’ first exhibition upon moving to NYC, titled ‘Mariposa’, was presented at Fitzgerald Jewelry, Brooklyn. The exhibition catalogue includes collaborations with fashion designer Timo Rissanen, ceramicist Andrew Robinson, photographer Mariano Garcia, stylist Ellen Schiavone Pande-Rolfsen and designer Zoë Sadokierski. I produced this series of collages in response… Read MoreDesign
A visual essay about the relationship between genetically modified creatures in Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy and the real world science they are based upon. Read MoreExhibition
The Urban Field Naturalists’ Guide to Lesser-Known Pollinators is an exhibition using storytelling to bridge the gap between environmental science and human experience of the natural world. Curated by Zoë Sadokierski and Andrew Burrell (Spec Studio, UTS School of Design), the exhibition features visualisations, assemblages of design objects and digital augmentation… Read MoreExhibition
Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy is set in a near-future post-apocalyptic age, in which anthropogenic climate change and bio-engineering have catastrophically altered the earth’s ecosystem and inhabitants. As Atwood tells it, humans are directly responsible for mass extinction of plant and animal species, and have unleashed genetically modified creatures… Read MoreWriting
Digital Culture Talk, National Library of Australia 9 December, 2014 Event blurb: How we read has been evolving since the advent of the internet and mobile devices now mean a good read is never more than a tap away. Rich media, e-books, new channels and other technological… Read MoreExhibition
End Game, Part One: Possible Cost of Complacency is the result of conversations Todd McMillan and I had while tinkering in a research studio at UTS. Todd was pairing excerpts from science fiction with photographs taken on a recent trip to Antarctica, while I created collages based… Read MoreDesign
These are the first seven books in the third series of Australian poet’s collections, published by Cordite Books. There are 10 books per series, the books are published incrementally through the year as they are completed and edited – one challenge is designing a series look without… Read MoreDesign
Jon Steiner’s short stories are unsettling but often laugh-out-loud funny. A reviewer wrote that this collection “manages to articulate last night’s forgotten dreams.” I used collage to convey a sense of Jon’s distinctive voice on the cover and scattered throughout the collection. Each collage features a photograph of Jon with… Read MoreDesign
The brief was to create a series design that could be applied to 4-5 books a year, with a preference for minimalist designs, strong lines and bold colours, and this description of Cordite as a brand: Cordite has become known as something modern, contemporary, progressive, a little daffy but also… Read MoreExhibition
For about three years I made almost daily ‘visits’ to a troupe of wild monkeys in the Nagano region of Japan, via a live webcam that updates every minute. When I needed a moment of calm at the computer, I would tune into our primate cousins soaking in an… Read MoreDesign
Four covers designed for the Viva La Novella competition, run by the Seizure collective. Sponsored by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, four emerging editors chose a novella each from the 150 entries, and work with their chosen author through ‘an intensive development and editorial process’. These four books are wildly different in… Read MoreWriting
Books are object to be read but also totems that tell stories about us through their physical presence in our lives. Favourite books line our living spaces, their spines display titles and authors that communicate something about us to our guests, and remind us of worlds we have inhabited through reading. Read MoreWriting
(Another Book) After Ed-werd Rew-shay Written, illustrated and designed in one week by Zoë Sadokierski. Printed on the Espresso Book Machine in about 5 minutes, at McNally Jackson bookstore. 52 Prince Street, NYC. 68pp paperback, A5 (148 x 210mm) Mono interior, colour cover… Read MorePage screen books
I designed this anthology live at the Sydney Writers’ Festival over 5-days, inviting audiences to watch the book design process in action via a screen attached to my laptop. I set the grid, style guide and commissioned some illustrations beforehand, with 17 illustrations created live by myself and others. Part… Read MoreExhibition
The Book of Days is a publishing experiment. During the 2015 Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF) I edited and designed a festival anthology live, on site at the Walsh Bay precinct. The anthology includes writing and illustrations from festival presenters, as well as contributions from the festival audience. The book was… Read MoreWriting
‘Memory Makes Us’ is a project run by IF:Book Australia in which authors write stories live at festivals, inspired by written memories contributed by the audience. The brief: collate twelve stories written at MMU events between 2013-15 as a ‘book’ in cheap broadsheet format, exploring the notion that memories are… Read MoreDesign
The publisher’s blurb for Gabrielle Carey’s non-fiction Moving Among Strangers: Randolph Stow and My Family: As her mother Joan lies dying, Gabrielle Carey writes a letter to Joan’s childhood friend, the reclusive novelist Randolph Stow. This letter sets in motion a literary pilgrimage that reveals long-buried family secrets. Read MorePage screen books
This illustrated book celebrates the relationships writers have with their typewriters. There’s no internet connection on a typewriter. It serves no other function than pressing inked letters onto a page. Its sole purpose is to write. This is why the relationship between writers and typewriters is so focused, singular and… Read MoreWriting
Publishing is the process of getting the author’s story out of her or his head and into the hands of a reader. Authors don’t write books, they write manuscripts. Publishing is the process of getting an author’s manuscript into the hands of a reader, by materialising it – giving it… Read MoreExhibition
‘Words from the First Walk’ explores three different perspectives of the same walk at ‘Coorah’, a sixth generation family farm in central west New South Wales. Poet and essayist Tom Lee, whose ancestor William Lee first arrived in the district in 1818, led the walk. Two of Tom’s essays about… Read MorePage screen books
A travel narrative about Shibu Onsen, a small town in the Nagano region of Japan famous for its thermal baths (onsen). Above Shibu Onsen is a forest where Japanese macaques bath in an outdoor onsen – they are the world’s only bathing monkeys. This book explains the onsen culture for… Read MoreDesign
An island of fishermen fall in love with Selkies – women who live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to walk in human form on the land. The consequences are heartbreaking. Photoshop illustration, using watercolour and pastel drawn elements. I used ink drawings of seaweed for chapter… Read MoreDesign
Young Adult fiction is often dark and slightly twisted – unsurprising, when you think about what’s happening hormonally for this demographic. As a designer who illustrates, I get to create more playful, illustrative covers in the YA genre than in adult fiction or other genres. This is one of the… Read MoreExhibition
Clunky, cumbersome typewriters were once commonly referred to as the work-horses of writers and secretaries. So why do some writers still use them today? Contrasted to the sleek, minimalist computers and hand-held devices most people use for typing, the very ‘horsiness’ of the humble typewriter is what makes them so… Read MorePage screen books
A Poetics of the Naughty is an essay written by Tom Lee, typeset and illustrated by Zoë Sadokierski. Tom and Zoë have been collaborating for several years to make illustrated books on seemingly ridiculous topics. Tom’s essay covers biblical naughty figs, trickster god Hermes, what naughty animals and children get… Read MoreDesign
“A meticulously researched, highly entertaining, idiosyncratic look at the how, why and what of bad language around the world.” … Read MorePage screen books
For a 2011 exhibition Type Horses: Writers and their typewriters (Blank_Space gallery, Sydney) I produced a series of offset lithographic prints at the Big Fag Press. There was a strip of unused space on the printing plate, so I ran a series of the typewriter drawings from a larger print along the edge,… Read MoreWriting
The article aims to illustrate ways authors have experimented with typographic devices to literary affect, and to encourage more experimentation with word-image interplay as a storytelling device. Read MoreDesign
A memoir, told through anecdotes about fashion. I illustrated the french-fold dust jacket with items from the author’s wardrobe, drawn from life and photographs taken at her house. The book is ‘undressed’ – removing the dust jacket reveals the lingerie illustrations on the book itself. More than 20 original illustrations… Read MoreExhibition
In this exhibition, I took a single short story (Sundays, by Katherine Danks) and ‘expanded’ it using three different graphic techniques: photography, illustration, experimental typography. The three different versions of Sundays were presented as individual books. Viewers were invited to read each book, then reflect on how the typographic,… Read MoreDesign
Two covers for Ursula Dubosarsky’s young adult novels. Dubosarsky’s writing is mysterious, enchanting and deeply affecting. I used a combination of hand-generated textures (created with pastels, turps-release prints, charcoal) and digital collage to create etherial and dreamlike covers. Read MorePage screen books
For my undergraduate honours project I wrote and designed a book about the future of books in the digital age. It’s written as a conversation between a print book and digital book in a bar. Print book is drowning his sorrows because everyone thinks he’s dying. Digital book is drinking… Read More
