Penguin Random House New Zealand
Award for Best Illustrated Book 2021
Finalist
Designers: Alan Deare & Dave McDonald, Area Design
Title: Endless Sea: Stories told through the taonga of the New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui te Ananui a Tangaroa
Publisher: Massey University Press
Format: 270 x 218mm, 260pp with 6pp gatefold insert, hardback with French-folded jacket.
Cover: Sakura Cloth case (4195 orange) plus foil stamping on front and spine.
Typography: Moderat, Cambon and Monarch.
The book design touches on a sense of a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ while keeping a tension between a coffee table scale of imagery, being elegant yet folky and idiosyncratic while creating a ‘wharfie’ prosaic-ness and warmth. Monarch is our display face, the voice that brings together the quirky range of taonga found throughout the publication. With its slanted and ornamental flourishes, the font evokes the flailing sails of the high seas, ship funnels, filaments of scaled down bottled ship rigging, the eclectic, folky range of typography found in the handwritten/printed ephemera. Also the scrolled, carved forms of a ship’s figurehead, guilded picture frames and whakairo. The Modest family is the prosaic ‘wharfie’ workhorse sans that reminds us of type found on ships — from the vessel’s name covered with layers of paint, to wayfinding and ballast load lines found on the ship’s bow. We used it as a wayfinding device which ascends up the leading edge of the verso page throughout the book. The captions size is emphasised, playing with convention, creating a friendlier scale while highlighting the unique details of each object. The captions are set in bright red, the key accent colour that pops up everywhere in the maritime world, on international semaphore flags, funnels, inside ventilation ports, hulls, lifesavers, postcards etc. Cambon is a modern serif that has an economical width, adding a touch of elegance and contemporary classicism to the mix.
Judges’ comments A vibrant inventory of historical maritime objects, and the last thing you’d expect a museum collection catalogue to look like. It’s busy and colourful, in the most appropriate way, with a clearly playful collaboration between the writers, photographer and designers. Aside from the cloth, folded half-jacket and signal-flag-endpapers, the witty headlines, attention-grabbing pull quotes, stylish art direction and miscellany of typefaces on display make it all feel like a magazine at times – but why shouldn’t it? This is a history book that remembers something many history books forget: it’s just as much about our lives now as it is about the stories embedded in the artefacts. An emphatically contemporary history book.
