What does a Creative Director do?

We ask Wonderbly’s Creative Director Paul the important questions. 

Last week we announced a mega exciting collaboration with personalised book publishers Wonderbly. This week, we’ve got the inside scoop from one of their creative team, Paul Coomey. Read on to find out who on earth Gizmo Socks is, what it’s like to collaborate with 6-year-olds and why seeing yourself at the heart of a story can be so special… 

Paul Coomey by Toby Shaw

• Hi Paul! We’ll start off easy – what do you do at Wonderbly?

I find amazing artists to draw and colour the characters and scenes in our books. I look for artists whose pictures make it look like they had fun doing it, and who don’t worry about something being perfect the first time. I do other things too, like helping come up with ideas for our books and thinking of places we can go and people we can meet to fill our heads with ideas that fuel our imaginations. (The name of my job is “Creative Director”)

• Sounds exciting! What does a typical day at the office look like for you? 

Drinking lots of tea (I have a secret stash of Barry’s Tea) and meeting lots of people to talk about books. I do a lot of scribbling on bits of paper, looking at art and illustrations on screens and in books, I have lunch with all of my work friends and then we often have a workshop which means getting everyone together without their computers to have ideas for one new book that we’re going to make. Sometimes if the weather is good I’ll walk to a bookshop with someone from my team, like Jenny who is our Lead Designer, or Adam who is our Creative Illustrator.

• What’s the weirdest task you have to do in your job?

It’s all a bit weird, really. We make up ideas for books that might never happen. I mean, most of the book ideas we have never turn into books – but sometimes old ghosts of ideas reappear when you don’t expect them to and become parts of other books.

“Seeing yourself at the centre of a story is a special experience because it shows you some of the kinds of real possibilities and impossibilities that you contain.”

• How do you stay creative, even in the grown-up world?

I have two cats: Gizmo Socks and Cotton Socks. They’re three years old and three-and-a-half years old which makes them grown-ups in cat years and they really like to play. Grown-ups that like to play – that’s the key! I like to play too to stay creative – I play music and drums and make up stories with my friends. I play in the sea.  The other thing that I love to do to stay creative is to go to schools and festivals and do workshops with kids because kids are really good at letting their imaginations run riot – they remind me that anything can be invented and that inspires me to stay creative.

• If you could live in a Wonderbly-style world, which one would you choose? Feel free to make up a new one!

I thought these questions were supposed to be hard? This one is so easy – I would choose the Shrunken Universe from Where Are You: Save The Multiverse! In this world everyone is about the size of a banana. But all the objects are the size they are in the real world. I could swim in the bath!

• The project we’re collaborating on is all about adventure stories – if you were an adventure hero, what would you be called? 

Ok, yeah – that’s a hard question. If I was an adventure hero, I would be called Song Chaser and in my adventures I would search for songs. I’d follow the sounds of singing, or birdsong, from one place to the next, to see where the singing takes me.

“Kids are really good at letting their imaginations run riot – they remind me that anything can be invented and that inspires me to stay creative”

• How do you feel about collaborating with 125 young writers, some as young as 6 years-old!?

6-years-old? No way! I’ve seen a teeny tiny bit of the writing and it was so good that it blew my freaking mind. I’ve seen writing by 106-year-olds that wasn’t even that good. I feel exceptionally lucky to be part of such a brilliant, imagination-filled collaboration and I can’t wait to see how all the books turn out!

• Wonderbly puts people at the heart of stories – Why is seeing yourself at the centre of a story such a special experience, especially for a young person?

Seeing yourself at the centre of a story is a special experience because it shows you some of the kinds of real possibilities and impossibilities that you contain. It allows you to believe in the unbelievable and to feel fantastic feelings and to see yourself transformed and if you can do those things – if you can do those things, then in your real life you will learn to believe in yourself, and when you believe in yourself you will find your tribe, and when you find your tribe you will have everything you need to be your true self, which is a great you to be.