Portraying tales
Manama: Call it destiny or a blessing in disguise. Najla Qamber’s inability to attend school helped her bring out her best talent. Born to a Bahraini father and a Filipino mother, Najla Qamber showed her creative skill at an early age.
As a kid, she loved school and would always join clay modelling and drawing competitions. But when she was struck with social anxiety, she was forced to take up homeschool. It gave her the opportunity to spend a lot of her time in sketching, colouring and photoshopping. At home her parents also inculcated these skills in her.
At the age of 16, Najla garnered the attention of a Creative Director at a prestigious design firm in Bahrain. There she interned under many talented graphics designers from around the world. The designers inspired her to explore the realm of graphics design. Later it led her to set up her own design studio.
Najla then learned Business Studies at AMA International University. At that time she was also freelancing for clients. After her graduation, Najla became a book cover designer. She has designed over 825 book covers so far.
She represented Bahrain and Najla Qamber Designs at the Indie Bookfest at Orlando, Florida. She also won the best book cover award for Crane by Stacey Rourke at the InD’Tales Rune Awards in 2015.
Najla Qamber Designs and Qamber Kids
An avid reader, Najla reckons that she is a book cover designer as well as a blogger. “I decided to create my own blog where I wrote reviews, met fellow bloggers and authors alike. I wanted to help my favourite authors as much as I could with a review or by simply spreading the word about their books on my blog,” Najla said.
“I came up with a segment on my blog where I offered to redesign a book cover just for fun. Soon, an independent small publishing company approached me about doing some projects with them. I snapped it up,” she explained. “Then my book cover portfolio grew and also my client base.”
Recalling her beginning, Najla said, “I used to offer free book cover designs just to build my portfolio and also to help others. I even have budget packages to help the authors, who start out their career. Getting the right cover is always vital as everyone judges a book by its cover.”
Qamber Kids, an extension of Najla Qamber Designs, where Najla and her sister work, embraces illustrators specialising in book covers, bookmarks, and many other things just for kids.
“My sister Nada takes care of Qamber Kids as a Project Manager. We bring together a group of illustrators from different parts of the world to design children’s books. This was another dream I’ve always wanted to tap into. They do the illustrations while we handle the layout work,” Najla remarked.
Passion for designing projects
For almost 10 years, graphic design has been the world of Najla. “I wake up every morning knowing many of my clients are counting on me to help them market their product, book, album or whatever I design for them. That sets my determination high to ensure I deliver on time with the best quality,” she commented.
According to Najla, her main source of inspiration is simple photos, whether it’s a feather in the air or a cobweb with dew shining through it in the light of dawn. “Photos like these trigger my creativity and once photoshop fires up, my mind know what I want to create.”
She has worked on notable projects where she loves working with the monthly subscription box called Lit-cube. Najla is currently working on recovering book covers for classics like “Alice in Wonderland,” “Jane Eyre,” “Pride and Prejudice” and “Peter Pan.” Another major project she loved working on recently is the logo for author Nova Carlyle.
Najla and her sister Nada recently designed a weekly planner called Write. Plan. Do., which is up for sale online. “We plan for designing more of these in the future. Together with designing weekly planners, I plan for providing still life stock photography to work alongside photographers from all over the world to create a readymade book cover store for every genre,” she added.
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