Upstart Press Award for Best Non-Illustrated Book 2017
Finalist
Designer: Jo Bailey & Anna Brown, School of Design, College of Creative Arts, Massey University
Title: Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand
Publisher: Victoria University Press
Format: 165 x 210 mm, 222pp, perfect binding with dust jacket.
Typography: Title are Domaine Display and running heads are Calibre (various weights), body text is Tiempos Text regular 9pt / 15pt.
Jo and Anna wrote a design colophon essay to the book, which lives in the dust jacket as a key, of sorts, to the book’s design. In it, we say of the typefaces: We choose two typefaces by New Zealand typographic designer Kris Sowersby: Tiempos and Calibre. As designers we say it’s important that if the words are from here, the typefaces should be too—but this is partly post-rationalisation. Tiempos, our serif font, is based on a typeface for a Spanish newspaper. Calibre, our sans serif, is inspired by street signage, and though this wayfinding lineage feels pertinent, it is happenstance. We choose it because it is a consistent favourite of ours—like a typographic version of our own handwriting. It’s the other way with Tiempos; the chance to explore something familiar but different. Later we add Domaine, also by Sowersby. It is elegantly curvaceous, ‘Latin detailing on a Scotch skeleton’.
Judges’ Comments Intriguing and playful cover, assuming the language of maps, but divulging coordinates of poetry or location details. The restricted colour palette works, and the change of place and change of pace with the section/chapter openers gives relief or cause to pause. That line length is it just a little long or is it just right? Unusual for a book to have a designers’ colophon. Perhaps the necessity for this ‘explanation’ is a little unnecessary as the qualities of the book can speak for themselves.