2022 Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand
People’s Choice Award
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 A ravishing blend of science, art, and book design in a volume devoted to the honey bee. Anna Brown has indeed created a ‘cabinet of wonder’ (to reference Anne Noble’s title for her art project), a folio of intellectual and artistic treasure made with skill, intelligence, care and craft – and also, as in all the greatest design, a confident playfulness, made possible by the designer’s understanding of the book’s theme and contents. The reference to old style bookbinding shown in the bindery style expresses such a wonderful and collaborative love of bookmaking in its widest sense, by all involved – publisher, authors, and designer. A special book.
