Harrison Williams
Managing Director & Creative Director, Interlink Publishing Group · London and Western Massachusetts
I'm a book designer, and I run Interlink Publishing, an independent publisher in Northampton, Massachusetts. Before that I spent nine years running a digital agency in London.
- Books designed
- 120, 2021–2026
- Roles
- Covers on 114 · interiors on 11 · creative direction on 11
- Publishers
- Interlink Books · Olive Branch Press · Crocodile Books · Interlink Foundation · Clockroot Books · Interlink Publishing
- Education
- BSc (Hons) Product Design, Brunel University London
My approach to book design
A book isn't just a container for the words inside it. It's a physical thing you hold, and the editing, the design, the paper and the printing all have to pull in the same direction for it to work.
I start with the book itself. What is it trying to say, who is it for, and what makes it different from everything else on the table? The design comes out of the answers. I try not to bring a house style to it, and I don't chase whatever look is in fashion that year.
The relationship between content and form is what interests me most. Type, photography, illustration, paper, binding, size and finish aren't separate decorative choices. Each one changes how the book reads, so each one has to earn its place.
I like restraint. Good design doesn't mean more design, and quite often the best decision is to take something away and let the pictures or the material do the work. Other books need the opposite, and then the job is to push the format and the making much further.
I also know what things cost. I've worked on every part of the process, from the printer to the sales figures, so I know how a choice of paper or binding shows up in the price, the margin and whether the book sells. I don't treat that as a limit on the design. It's part of the brief.
What I want most is books that people keep. Books they pick up, come back to, leave out on the table, give to someone, and eventually pass on.
When a book is right, it should feel as if it couldn't have been made any other way.
The story so far
- Training
Product design · Brunel University London
I studied Product Design at Brunel, not graphic design, and it still shapes how I work. I think of a book as something manufactured first: board, cloth, paper, the binding, how heavy it feels in your hands. The cover matters, but it's only part of it.
- 2010–2019
CHC Digital · London
In 2010 I set up CHC Digital, an agency doing brand, websites, ecommerce and campaigns. Over nine years we did more than 200 projects, for clients like Christian Dior, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Hackett, Formula E, Holland & Holland, PwC, Epson and Christian Aid, and won around 13 industry awards along the way, including a Stevie, a Horizon Interactive Distinguished Agency award and an International Media Award.
Running an agency is a lot more than design. I had to find the work, hire the people, watch the money and make sure things shipped. I brought that with me into publishing.
- 2019
Interlink Publishing · Northampton, Massachusetts
In 2019 I became Managing Director and Creative Director of Interlink Publishing Group. We're an independent publisher with an international list: fiction and translation, current affairs, cookery, children's books and illustrated books. We publish around 90 to 100 new titles a year, and the catalogue runs to more than 1,000.
My job covers a book from start to finish: what we publish and how we position it, the design, the printing, the data that goes out to retailers, distribution, sales and reprints. In a normal week I'm talking to editors, printers and the sales team, often on the same book.
- 2021–
The books
Since 2021 I've designed 120 books for Interlink. Most of that is covers (114 of them), and I've done the interiors or the creative direction on 11 each. I also photograph every finished book myself, on the same white background and under the same light, which is why the pictures on this site look like they belong together.
Some of the hardest ones were production problems as much as design problems. Traditional Palestinian Costume is 576 pages and comes in several parts. The Difference Between Bullets and Stones has a binding that's part of the concept. On Andaluz, a lot of the work went into getting the shape and the materials right.
I spend a lot of time on the backlist too. Divine Names, The Book of Arabic Wisdom, The Poetry of Arab Women, Abu Jmeel’s Daughter, Persiana and Andaluz were all redesigned and repositioned, and they've had a second life because of it.
- Recognition
Awards
Chinese-ish won the James Beard Award for Visuals, and Tanoreen was picked for AIGA 50 Books | 50 Covers in 2026. A' Design also listed me in its Top 500 Designers Worldwide.
Books I've designed have picked up other awards as well. Forever Beirut was a Library Journal Best Book of 2022, Macedonia was shortlisted for the Taste Canada Awards, Suleima’s Ring was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden won at the 2025 Muslim Book Awards.
- Now
Building our own tools
Small publishers can't really buy software that fits the way they work, so I've built a lot of ours myself. That includes our metadata feeds to Booksonix, wholesale ordering, stock and purchase orders, and Collie, a system that pulls together everything on more than 1,000 titles across three warehouses.
I also built Interlink's online shop and grew our special sales. I go to the Frankfurt, London and Bologna book fairs, and I've spoken at the Chelsea FC Innovation Hub.
Get in touch · hw@interlinkbooks.com