From Art Teacher to Book Designer: A Career Evolution
Visual designer Chloé Dorgan’s love of art started at such a young age that she can’t remember a time when she wasn’t drawing—or diving into a good book.
“Reading has always played a central role in my life, a place of comfort and of imagination for me,” Chloé says. “As a child, I would write stories and illustrate them, and this pairing of imagery to narrative has been important ever since.”
Her early, informal art education was simply exposure: going to art museums and learning through seeing while building an internal visual library. That library would later inform her career journey.
Born and raised in France in an American household, Chloé came to the United States in 2011 to study at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Wanting to push her art skills as far as possible with what she perceived at the time as “the purest form of creation and new ideas in the art world,” she earned her undergraduate degree in painting with a concentration in art history.
After graduation Chloé found a real sense of purpose in teaching the arts, securing a job as an art specialist in a California elementary charter school, while earning her teaching credential during the evenings. She then moved to a full-time teaching post at a Santa Clarita public high school. A move later with her husband to Oregon, Chloé continued on her teaching trajectory. At this point, she had changed schools and age brackets three times already.
Although her focus was on teaching during those years, she also began freelancing as an illustrator and artist.
“In 2017, I started teaching myself how to use Procreate in order to have a wider skill set,” she says of her lifelong learning habits, “and that ended up being crucial to creating an illustration for a book last year.”
Chloé was contemplating a break from teaching and began exploring other avenues for a creative art career. After years as an educator, Chloé still felt a strong drive to connect to people through her art. She also began to voraciously read again.
Combining a Love of Books and Visual Design
“My love for books planted a seed in my mind,” Chloé says, “but I thought, ‘Surely not, because how would I even get into book design? I never took a graphic design course at RISD, I only know the basics of Photoshop and I’ve never touched Illustrator or InDesign.’
“Since I was still working as a teacher, the Professional Program in Graphic Design was a perfect fit,” Chloé lauds. “It is West Coast based and online, so the hours allowed me to go to work during the day and go ‘to school’ in the evening.
“Another big part of my decision was the flexibility to be able to take just one class at a time or take breaks if needed. In the end, I did one class at a time while teaching and then I did as many as three classes at a time when I no longer was working.”
The courses Chloé completed included the following:
- Visual Design Principles
“This course stood out to me as a great introduction to the field of design. The way it was structured also allowed us a lot of practice in engaging in critique about design and to learn from others.” - Typography Fundamentals
“Taught by Shelley Gruendler, this class was an exciting and challenging ride! I found it to be a very powerful introduction to typography and pushed me to really see type. It laid some excellent foundations for me as I make decisions about type on book covers and what impact that choice will have.” - InDesign
“This course ended up being absolutely crucial to me in securing freelance work in the book industry a couple of months later. This and the Illustrator course are both taught by Steve Werner, who did an excellent job in structuring his courses. The recordings and tutorials were especially helpful for serious skill building with these software.” - Photoshop I
“Instructor Nicolas Gutierrez was great, and I found the course to be a good balance between skill building and critique. It would have been very hard to start my job as a junior designer for Celadon Books without the foundation of skills I learned during this class.” - Illustrating Children’s Books
“This class, taught by Julie Downing, was an absolute joy and I truly recommend it to anyone who enjoys creating. I looked forward to the class each week.” - Graphic and Web Design Portfolio
“Moses Ulhas teaches a great capstone class that pulls everything together. I felt I had different pieces of assignments before but they became a cohesive package afterward. It’s been about a year and half since I’ve finished the program and I still use my portfolio website, as well as the branding pieces I created.”
She also took Illustrator I and Web Design with HTML5 and CSS3 to round out her skill set.
Because she was so new to the field, it was through perseverance that Chloé finally found two valuable freelance opportunities where she was able to apply her learning in class to projects in her new roles.
“With CodingNomads, I was brought in to help redesign the visual assets for their online coding course,” she relates. “I had a visual style guide to work from and had to make decisions on how to best convey the information. To create the assets, I used Illustrator and InDesign, which I learned in my courses. I also used the skills learned in my Visual Design Principles class to be able to communicate with clients about the overall vision and needs of the project.
“Working for Mountaineers Books was incredible and a wonderful freelance experience for a new designer. They were looking for someone to do the full interior layout of their new guidebook. It was a tough job for a new designer and took extensive InDesign skills, as well as a lot of learning on my end. Luckily, I had a wonderful creative director I reported to and it felt like I was part of a team. I used basic and more advanced long-document InDesign skills, as well as photo retouching in Photoshop and a bit of map-making in Illustrator. I ended up working on two additional books for Mountaineers, which all made for an excellent introduction to design work in the publishing world.”
In addition, Chloé interned with Overcup Press, where she flexed Illustrator skills to create a branded pattern for bookmarks and notebooks. She was also introduced to the concept of “cover comps,” which are variations on ideas for a cover using a blend of Photoshop and InDesign to create them.
Post-Program Career Goals
Today, Chloé is a full-time junior designer for Celadon Books, a division of Macmillan. Starting off as an intern after completing our graphic design program, and then securing her current role, Chloé says she feels fortunate to be able to use her design skills every day and have quite a bit of variety in the work.
“One of my main responsibilities is to prepare paperback versions of hardcover jackets for our titles, and I primarily use InDesign and Photoshop,” she explains.
“I prepare files for printing and run all the commands necessary to make sure the file prints correctly. I also work on original cover concepts for new titles—such as Best Offer Wins, which was Good Morning America’s December 2025 book club pick. Other tasks include finding new typefaces, choosing Pantone color options for a cover, researching artists or illustrators we might want to hire, and attending many meetings, of course!”
As Chloé grows in her graphic design career, she knows that her taste and design choices will evolve. “I think it takes time to fully understand the specific field of design we inhabit: the clichés, the fresh, the specific, the surprising. But, ultimately, what will help the reader choose to pick up the book?
“Along with that growth in visual perception,” she adds, “I’m continually seeking to improve my hard skills in Adobe programs, typography and illustration for covers.”
And as the graphic design field continues to evolve, how does she see AI being incorporated into her creative work?
“AI is a tricky one for us book designers but it generates a lot of great discussion,” she replies. “I believe that we have to be very careful in our approach because we have this beautiful opportunity to make a piece of art that hopefully gets a reader to choose a story to read. What an incredible honor to help carry a story from one human to another! I hope we don’t rush to outsource the incredible ideating and creating process involved.
“I also know that technological progress is all around us and that there are realities, as well as opportunities, available to us. What I would advise any designer entering this field is to learn all the skills, but with caution in their application. Learn how to use AI tools within Photoshop and be selective in using them. Read all new articles—and from different sources—about how AI positively and negatively impacts our world and make conscious decisions about how you will approach the new field of work.”
In the meantime, now that Chloé has reignited that passion for art that began so many years ago in France, she remains clear on her vision: “My career goals haven’t changed—I just am amazed that I get to see them through as a book designer and am grateful to be part of this slice of the design world.”
