- Type
- Editorial design
- Web design
- Photography
- Client
- Personal project
- Aug 2014
- My role
- Creative writing
- Photography
- Cartography
- Web design & dev
Ich war schnorcheln
und habe Vögel gesehen
A travel journal written from the perspective of two graphic designers. Together they travelled for 10 weeks in 2013 with local buses through five countries of South America. The book reveals their individual travel experiences and provide information on the history of each country they travelled to.
00 · The idea
Hey, let's write a book together!
What do you do with so many impressions from a 10-month trip in one of the world’s most vibrant continents? — Well, you write a 236-page book and you pack it with the best entries of your travel journal.
Of course, all those photos you took need a place to shine as well. In the end you complement the book with some illustrated maps and infographics, you pay a fortune for having it printed and bound, and you try hard to find a publisher.
Additional details
Co-author and press articles
01 · Design decisions
Differentiating travel impressions
The book was written from two different perspectives: mine’s and Kathleen Gust’s. My impressions were recorded at the moment and came straight from the travel journal I carried with me while travelling. On the other hand, Kathleen’s impressions were the result of an end-of-day reflection, a summary of everything she had experience during that day.
We’ve worked with typography to differentiate these two distinctive writing styles and tried to convey the writing rhythm within the layout, time-stamped fragments of text against a solid justified blocks of words.
02 · publishing
How to find a publisher?
With a printed book in my hand, I went to the Frankfurt International Book Fair in 2014 and presented it to several publishing houses. The reactions were pretty much the same, “Oh! It is a beautifully designed book, but alas, we see very little commercial profit when we take the printing costs into account”.
I wouldn’t take “No” for an answer. So, I went home and created a single-purpose promotional webpage about the book and sent it to design magazines, online portals and independent publishing houses.
For the interactive maps, I’ve used Mapbox to reflect the style of the printed maps and, with some additional JavaScript, show the route and covered distance along the journey. Although the website helped with reaching new audiences and creating awareness, the book is still waiting to be published.
03 · Design details
Going crazy for the details
Thread stitching, half linen binding with letter embossing on the cover. The inner pages were printed in Metapaper extrarough white 120g. The chosen typefaces were Botanika Mono and Botanika Standard designed by Tomáš Brousil.
