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Meet Valeri: Award-winning Book Cover Designer studying MA Graphic Design (Online)
- Written byChloe Bowen
- Published date 12 May 2026
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This blog includes insights and student work examples from a current MA Graphic Design (Online) student at London College of Communication, UAL Online.
MA Graphic Design (Online) student Valeri Rangelov is an Edinburgh-based Book Cover Designer with eight years of experience in publishing. He’s designed covers for many authors including Olivia Laing, Len Pennie, Harry Baker and Lidia Yuknavitch, bringing stories and visions to bookshelves.
His designs have earned industry recognition from the Academy of British Cover Design (ABCD), winning the 2022 award in the science fiction category and being shortlisted again in 2025. We spoke to Valeri about how the course is helping him develop a richer, more culturally and historically informed approach around his full-time career.
Hey Valeri! Why did you choose to study a Master's?
I have an interest in graphic design not only from a practical standpoint but as an academic discipline. I wanted to dive deeper and explore it in a structured, guided manner.
What made UAL Online the right choice for you?
I enjoy what I do professionally and was not motivated by a career change, so the main factor was finding a course that would allow me to study while working full-time. I'd been searching for similar courses for a few years at this point, but I found most part-time programmes still had unrealistic schedules for people with full-time commitments like myself.
I’m not a freelancer, so courses built around half-day activities and workshops can make it harder to feel connected to your studies and peers if you’re unable to attend. I liked that this online course can be completed alongside full-time employment - I was worried it would feel distant and impersonal, but my UAL experience has been quite the opposite.
How do you balance online study with a full-time job?
I work the usual 9-5 with three days in the office. I tend to do most assignments over the weekend, and some on weekday evenings. I attend most of the live sessions as they overlap with my lunch breaks, but I've also had days where I've had to miss some - having the option to view the recordings afterwards has been very useful.
While it did take some adjusting at the beginning, the structure of the course breaks down weekly assignments into manageable chunks. Of course, life can take unexpected turns, but I've always felt that I can communicate any concerns to the tutors or the Student Success Team freely, and everyone has been very understanding and accommodating.
How would you describe your experience so far in three words?
Diverse. Fulfilling. Enriching.
What’s something you care deeply about that shows up in your work?
The main challenge is to create something that sits comfortably next to similar titles on busy bookshop shelves, while still being exciting and original. I’d say what I care most about is remaining invisible enough, while creating designs that not only serve their purpose but also excite and inspire, both the reader and myself.
Whenever I read a new manuscript, I always search for visual cues from the get-go, as the goal is to visualise the book’s themes and the author's tone of voice, while keeping the target audience in mind throughout the process.
What’s something you can do now that you couldn’t do before starting the course?
So much!
From a more critical perspective on creative learning to a more culturally and historically informed approach to practical work, and also from a technical perspective, I've played around with type design and visual programming, which I've been enjoying and feel I could never get around to without the added push of new briefs and deadlines.
Can you tell us about your favourite project from unit one?
My In Memoriam campaign was about transforming obituaries into a visual language to commemorate the loss of species due to wildfires. It was inspired by public memorials such as The National Covid Memorial Wall and the Aids Monuments of Names. My goal was to merge arts and activism to spark reflection on human absence and ecological consequences.
The visuals were created from torn and burnt scraps of paper, utilising a very minimal colour palette, with the imagined final outcome being an installation of wall-mounted death notices (similarly to the display of obituaries on community notice boards in some European countries).
How is the course supporting your career development so far?
I find that a very common trait amongst graphic designers is how interested they seem to be in subjects that don’t have anything in common with graphic design specifically. From architecture to film, music and literature – it’s almost essential to be passionate about something separate, which can feed into professional work and lead to many new, surprising sources of inspiration.
This is how I've been viewing the more experimental, research-based projects through the MA – while they appear completely separate from my usual cover design work, one inevitably informs the other and vice versa - and I find that very stimulating.
What advice would you give to someone considering the course?
Personally, I applied with a very specific research interest in mind, which ended up changing very early on in the course. And so I’d say that anyone who thinks they know what they want to extract from their studies should approach them with an open mind. The content structure and tutor expertise can very quickly make you fall down a brand new rabbit hole to explore.
