South London-based Helen Friel had to create a new job description for what she does. The term “paper engineer” sounds surreal; against the images of heavy duty machinery and algorithms the word “engineer” conjures up, paper is a contradictorily throwaway presence. However, Friel’s craft-based design process, where she cuts and assembles paper to create inventive images for Tatler and Vanity Fair, and a range of commercial clients, is pretty straightforward.

She loved pop-up books as a child, worked at a greetings card company after graduating from Central St Martins, and rather than a sketchpad, she uses Post-It notes, which she moves around to build up the finished product.

She also works on personal book projects that play on our relationship with everyday paper. For example, The Imp of the Perverse requires its readers to tear and fold pages to reveal sections of the text — everything you were always told not to do to a book. Her most recent, For Matters of Life and Death, is a well-designed series of cashier’s dockets and entry tickets for surreal situations.

Friel works from the Papered Parlour in Clapham, an artspace inhabited by a group of like-minded artists and designers. (I recently interviewed her for a Swedish design industry title). Find her online at www.helenfriel.com