Penguin Random House New Zealand
Award for Best Illustrated Book 2022
Winner
Designers: Cover: Anna Brown with support from Matt Law.
Interior: Anna Brown. Bee diagrams revisions: Matt Law
Title: Conversātiō — In the company of bees
Publisher: Massey University Press
Format: 230 x 170mm, 272pp. The book is coptic bound, allowing the book binding to be visible (this is important when thinking about how the apiscope and beehive was made visible in a gallery context). The book comprises multiple paper stocks, using high gloss for the opening photographic work, cream stock for the essays with photographic work, a coloured stock for the text excerpts on bees and a screen printed sakura cloth French fold dust jacket.
The format of the book is relatively small for its scope, akin to a compendium rather than the coffee-table book. It is designed to be held and read — inviting a deeper engagement with the text and images.
Typography: Tiempos and Untitled Sans, Klim Type Foundry (by New Zealand designer Kris Sowersby)
Judges’ comments From its diagrams of bee mazes to its clever paper stock choices, fabric cloth cover and stitched spine, when considering this book we were not just looking at the graphic layout, although that is satisfying too. The designer’s interest in the life and times of the honeybee, as seen through the work of the author and artist Anne Noble and contributing researchers, hums throughout. Even the contents pages are unexpected works of art, given life by a diagram of ‘the chasing behaviour of houseflies’. There is a sense of an almost bee-like collaboration here, between the authors, Anne Noble and Zara Stanhope, the designer, the publisher, and even the bees.
