Working with Great Women
Throughout my career, I have had the privilege of working with brilliant women including Toni Morrison and Julia Child. I want to celebrate these amazing women along with the great women I am working with now: my clients and the talented women at Odgis + Co.
Toni Morrison is a renowned American novelist and Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner. One of her novels, Beloved, was adapted into a film of the same name (starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover). President Barack Obama presented Morrison with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I was the Special Projects Designer at Random House Inc. when Toni was an acquiring editor. I had the great pleasure of working with Toni, designing the covers for some of the books she acquired. From Toni, I learned the importance of putting my heart and soul into my work.
When I designed Julia Child's classic cookbook, The Way to Cook, she taught me a crucial lesson. No, it wasn't about baking the perfect soufflé. When we were laying out the recipes, she insisted that the how-to steps and pictures always appeared on the same page as their recipe. Words and images mutually reinforced one another, creating a sum that was greater than its parts—just like a good recipe. Julia's book wasn't just a manual. It was a series of stories. But those stories couldn't build on one another unless each one was properly understood.
Odgis + Co is an award-winning brand design studio based in New York City. For 30 years, Janet Odgis has worked with some of the world's most prestigious corporations reinventing ways to define and express their brands. She is a contributer to HuffPost and shares articles on LinkedIn.
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a renowned American novelist and Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner. One of her novels, Beloved, was adapted into a film of the same name (starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover). President Barack Obama presented Morrison with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I was the Special Projects Designer at Random House Inc. when Toni was an acquiring editor. I had the great pleasure of working with Toni, designing the covers for some of the books she acquired. From Toni, I learned the importance of putting my heart and soul into my work.
Julia Child
When I designed Julia Child's classic cookbook, The Way to Cook, she taught me a crucial lesson. No, it wasn't about baking the perfect soufflé. When we were laying out the recipes, she insisted that the how-to steps and pictures always appeared on the same page as their recipe. Words and images mutually reinforced one another, creating a sum that was greater than its parts—just like a good recipe. Julia's book wasn't just a manual. It was a series of stories. But those stories couldn't build on one another unless each one was properly understood.
Odgis + Co is an award-winning brand design studio based in New York City. For 30 years, Janet Odgis has worked with some of the world's most prestigious corporations reinventing ways to define and express their brands. She is a contributer to HuffPost and shares articles on LinkedIn.
