I've had the pleasure of working with Tessa on a wide range of projects, and she is someone I would recommend wholeheartedly. Time and again, she's delivered high-quality work with very little oversight, balancing a significant workload while consistently producing thoughtful, strategic creative that supports business goals and drives results.
One of the things I appreciate most about Tessa is her ability to take complex information and turn it into something clear, engaging, and easy to navigate. She has a strong instinct for what matters most and always keeps the bigger picture in mind while ensuring the details aren't overlooked.
Tessa also has a wonderful editorial eye. She's incredibly thoughtful about page layout, content flow, and visual hierarchy, creating experiences that feel intuitive and engaging for the audience. She's meticulous when it comes to copy, consistency, and style guide adherence, and I can always count on her to catch details that others might miss. Her work is not only creative, but also polished, purposeful, and exceptionally well-crafted.
Beyond her skills, Tessa is simply a fantastic partner. She's collaborative, reliable, thoughtful, and brings a positive, calm approach to every project. She's someone I trust completely and someone who consistently makes both the work and the team better.
I would welcome the opportunity to work with Tessa again anytime. She is the kind of person who elevates every project she touches, as well an authentic and kind person, and any team would be lucky to have her.
—Deborah Knapp, Creative Director
Lexia Learning
Seattle, WA
Tessa’s work impresses me on multiple levels. She has an uncanny sense for what the client is thinking but hasn’t yet articulated. She really listens effectively to what clients want, produces beautiful and creative design ideas, and does it all in a timely manner and with superb communication skills. Not sure how so many terrific talents and abilities find their way into one designer! I HIGHLY recommend Tessa and would hire her again in a heartbeat.
—Joe Fierst, Principal Creative Designer
Cengage Learning
Boston, MA
I had the pleasure of working closely with Tessa at Lexia, and she was an invaluable creative partner to our regional marketing team. As a designer, she had a unique ability to take a collection of ideas, feedback, and often very random details and transform them into polished, effective assets that supported our business goals.
She created countless guides, brochures, flyers, presentations, infographics, and other materials that helped us communicate the value of our solutions to prospective customers. One of the things I appreciated most was her ability to synthesize information from multiple sources—often combining elements from existing assets with new content and messaging—to create something fresh, cohesive, and exactly what was needed.
Beyond her exceptional design skills, she was incredibly collaborative and easy to work with. She consistently brought thoughtful recommendations to improve our assets, while ensuring everything remained aligned with brand standards and best practices. Her attention to detail, creativity, and strategic mindset elevated every project she touched.
Most importantly, she was a trusted partner who always approached her work with professionalism, positivity, and a willingness to help. Working with her made projects better
and the process easier. Any team would be fortunate to have her, and I would welcome the opportunity to work with her again.
—Jolie Rotar, Marketing Manager
Lexia Learning
Denver, CO
Our company has worked with Tessa for over six years, and her hard work and design skills have taken us from a dream to a very successful start-up company. Tessa turned our very raw pen sketches into dozens of polished, ready-for-market ads and brochures. To say her patience was extraordinary would be an understatement. She not only effortlessly accepted our endless revisions and a constant stream of new ideas; she returned them with fresh, creative improvements. Super fast and exceptionally easy to work with, Tessa is a total professional. We cannot recommend her highly enough!
—Kyle Morrison, Broker Agent
Kyle Morrison Homes / Sotheby's Realty
Carmel, CA
Tessa offers that rare ability to provide an enhanced version of her client’s vision as well as her own unique and creative ideas. She is a true professional—reliable, organized, and ethical. She has designed beautiful books for us in several different genres, from picture books to novels to non-fiction with complex graphs and footnotes. And her book covers have been creative and carefully conceived. She focuses on the big picture while staying on top of the smallest details. Most of all, she is always a pleasure to work with.
—Amy Herzog, Publisher
Why Not Books
Pacific Grove, CA
Tessa has the level of experience I was looking for in an editor and designer. I wanted someone who would provide the whole package, and who would get to know my book inside and out in the same way I did. This gave me the confidence to trust Tessa implicitly when it came to sharing ideas, giving advice, and coaching me through a process that was completely new to me. She was so calming and reassuring on the days when I had doubts about my content, assertive when I needed to take on board her recommendations, and always incredibly professional and thorough in her responses to my queries. Together, we were able to produce an amazing book that exceeded my expectations, and I am in no doubt that without Tessa, I would still be sitting looking at an unfinished manuscript.
—Sallyann Beresford
writer, owner at Birthability
Hampton-in-Arden, UK
Tessa is not only wildly talented as a creative designer—she also is collaborative and made me feel invested in how the end product would look. When my book was published, I wasn’t sure just how well the content would be received by readers, but I knew for sure that people would absolutely love Tessa’s fantastic imagery on the jacket-cover as well as on the inside. And they did! Whenever I write my next book, she’s the easiest decision I will have to make.
—Michael Golden
writer, political strategist, professor
Chicago, IL
As the designer and layout artist for our alumni newsletter, Communiqué, Tessa helped us work through a steady evolution in design approach while ensuring that layout and production was always handled in a timely fashion, with excellent communication with both the client and the printer. She is very responsive and listens carefully to clients’ needs, and we have enjoyed working with her very much.
—Jason Warburg, Executive Director of Communications
Middlebury Institute of International Studies
Monterey, CA
Tessa is that rare person who not only has the ability to use the Left and the Right Brain to effect; she does so in concert. A true artist, with an eye for substance and form, she understands how to create exceptional graphic and visual art that evokes emotion as it illustrates the point of the story.
Yet she also designs with a keen sense of audience, and what it takes to reach them. She knows the publishing world and how to access and work with it, and she knows how to read her clients to give imagery to our ideas. Tessa is bright, she is quick, and she is compassionate. She listens and she is flexible to her client’s needs, yet she also knows how to command authority over her work. A real blend of talents to an exceptional outcome, indeed.
—Lisa Crawford-Watson
writer, journalist, professor
Carmel, CA
Tessa has worked for us for the past 10 years as a contract employee. Her main responsibility has been page composition for the mathematics textbooks that we publish. She has been a very reliable and accurate compositor. She has also done design work for us and she is good at that as well. She responds quickly to all requests and is very pleasant to work with. She has our highest recommendation.
—Pat McKeague, Owner / Author
XYZ Textbooks / MathTV
San Luis Obispo, CA
Tessa is one of my favorite people to work with during textbook production. We have worked together for a few years now and she always has a way of making the difficult stuff look easy. You can always count on Tessa to meet a deadline even when her list of tasks may seem unreasonable. She finds a way to get it done. On top of all of that, she is an excellent communicator. She is great at following up and clarifying any issues she finds during production. She cares about what she is doing and it shows. I have really enjoyed getting to know Tessa, and I hope to continue working with her for a long time.
—Buddy Galetti, Business Data Analytics Manager
Southwind Foods
San Luis Obispo, CA
Tessa’s work is creative, inspired, and always on-target for the audience and the product. She meets deadlines and is always innovative with her ideas. She’s fun and collaborative to work with. I’m proud of every project I’ve done with Tessa.
—Jean Thompson, Principal
Thompson Drake Public Relations
Bend, OR