From the Reader’s Imagination
Mary McKay had an idea for an unusual book, and she needed help bringing her vision to life. Inspired by a sketchbook she found at local art supplies store Wet Paint, she wanted to create a write-in book with inspirational ideas that a child would illustrate and complete themselves. But something special enough that it would become a lifetime keepsake.
“Paul is inspired to do this work. He ‘cherished’ my work but kept a very level head when I was heading to la la land. This part of Paul is priceless.”
Project Brief
Mary’s professional work was as an ESL teacher for young adults. She knew firsthand the struggles kids and young adults could have. Her goal was to create something that helps young people to see that they have a story to tell, and to feel confident in telling their own truths.
Mary did her homework, and came to me with a clear view of how this book should work, and several aesthetic ideas for incorporating her Welsh heritage. What she didn’t know was how to turn it into reality.
The flow of the book would be simple: text on the left hand page, with a completely blank right hand page for the reader to add their own thoughts, colors, or images. She imagined some way for incorporating a sort of simple geometry adornment of the text, inspired by Welsh love spoons (geometrically simpler than the ornamental Celtic designs). And she wanted to include colorful “illuminated” initial capital letters (“drop caps”) for each page.
It was important that the book maintain a balance of playfulness and elegance. The pages should inspire the reader, but not dictate what they should add to make the book their own.
The initial production run plan was for a mere 50 copies (we ended up increasing that to 100), which she intended to give away. A passion project if I’ve ever seen one!
“Illuminated” Initial Capitals … on every page
The balance of the conceptual work of a book’s design usually weighs heavily toward the cover. For novels, memoirs, and other text-dominant books, this is undoubtedly the case. The cover’s design tends to dictate the aesthetic for the interior. Children’s picture books, on the other hand, are the other way around: the cover is only more work than any other page because its importance tends to favor more rounds of review and revision.
In Fear Less, this balance was more like a children’s book because of the unique ornamental nature of the interior pages. The cover is no less important, but its design tends to be dictated by the interior’s aesthetic dominance. The cover and interior were developed in parallel.
I began by researching illuminated initial capitals. The monochrome entries that my friend Marsha Micek had painstakingly worked to catalog from the Maywald Collection served as a great starting point (a notable article by Stephen Heller on the recutting of a sample of these letters). However, color was to be very important to this book, so, with research in hand, I began poring over stock illuminated letter illustrations.
Our initial concept was to have a different letter style, with a different color palette on every page. That proved to be too chaotic. Instead, we settled on a single color scheme and a handful of different libraries. None of the stylized letters are repeated in the book, although styles certainly are.
I decided to pair this with the somewhat funky font Mrs. Eaves. Based on the clean eponymous font by John Baskerville, Mrs. Eaves is Emigre’s Zuzano Licko’s attempt at a revival. (Mrs. Eaves is named for Sarah Eaves, Baskerville’s live-in housekeeper and later wife). I’ve always enjoyed the Mrs. Eaves font, but it is a typeface that needs to be taken in moderation—perfect for this sort of design.
Framing the Instructions
The two remaining pieces of the interior puzzle came together nicely. First, we needed some instructions on how to use this book. Initially, Mary didn’t want this to appear in the book itself, fearful that it would interrupt the beauty of the reader/writer’s own work. We were planning to insert a separate card into the book.
To make the card distinctive, I created an interwoven border pattern, based on the door handles that Mary had initially suggested as inspiration for the book’s aesthetic.
Ultimately, we decided to incorporate the border pattern and instructions directly into the book on the title page. Then, because I liked it so much, I also used it for the colophon page—now the border frame could serve as bookends to the interior of the book.
Cover Development
The initial caps set an aesthetic for reserved but very present ornamentation. The cover needed to continue this. However, instead of repeating the initial cap idea, I opted for a full script cover, debossed in gold foil on a dark blue field. The typeface Royal Signage, designed by Tobias Saul and distributed by Heritage Type, served as a solid basis.
In early tests, Mary quickly discovered that she preferred the title “Fear Less” to her initial thought of “Fearless,” as its instructive nature seemed fitting for the book’s nature. The playful nature, however, and ambiguity between “fear less” and “fearless,” were certainly not lost on us, either.
After modifying the base letterforms to better suit a prominent title, a couple of iterations quickly brought us to the straight baseline version of the final design. Mary insisted that the words not touch, to make sure this distinction was always clear, although I hedged this a bit by playing with the “r” of “fear” and letting it swoop under the scripted “L” of “Less.” I used a thin shadow line to add depth to the type.
To finish off the front cover, I opted to have Mary’s name printed in white—one of the significant advantages of working with Smart Set and their 5-color digital press. More on that in a minute.
The back cover presented us with a perfect opportunity to introduce another visual element. The icon for Wales, and indeed its sports teams, is the Welsh Dragon. While not wanting to use that dragon directly, we both really liked the idea of a medieval dragon. Again, drawing on stock illustrations as the starting point, I modified and adapted the illustration to create the final version, again suitable for foil debossing in the same matte gold as the front cover.
The cover material was selected from a range of open-stock options provided by local paper supplier Anchor Paper. From a handful of options that fit the bill, Mary opted for the Neenah Classic Linen 80T in Patriot Blue. The subtle linen texture pairs perfectly with the foil stamping to add just the right amount of texture, effectively showcasing the gold.
Production
Just as the authors, artists, businesses, and publishers rely on me as the book designer to turn their concepts into reality, I, too, rely on the work of printers to turn my ideas into physical objects. I love working with various printers, learning about their specialized equipment, and discovering their unique strengths.
In the case of Fear Less, I knew I would need someone extra special. The reason is the unfortunate economics of very short-run books: the work required to create 50 or even 100 books is dominated by the setup: for printing the covers in white on one machine, then foil stamping the front and back on another; for color printing the interior; and then for merging the two in an odd size.
I turned to Kevin Brown and Molly Ruoho at Smart Set, a certified B-Corp printer in Northeast Minneapolis. While this is neither the biggest nor the smallest job Smart Set has handled, nor the most complex, I knew their hands-on approach to work would benefit this particular project.
With Kevin’s help, we were able to splurge on elements like gold foil and white printing, while saving by using a simple saddle-stitch square-fold binding. It ended up being most economical to print the books oversized and trim them down… unfortunately, waste is part of the game. At least I can trust that Smart Set will definitely recycle the scraps.
Field Testing
In marketing, we talk about “target audience.” And as a designer, I spent a lot of time wondering just how a book, its cover and layout, will connect with readers.
But at the end of the day, it comes down to how does each reader connect with the book. Mary was eager to test this out with Ben, a creative 9-year old who was in part the inspiration for the project. A fancy book that he is supposed to write in? At first, he didn’t quite know what is expected.
As his mother explained it to Mary, she told her son, “It’s like in [The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, when in] Narnia, Aslan gave the children gifts. They did not understand at first,” but had to learn how to use their treasures. As Mary explained it to me, “that again was the call to grace of this whole project.”
Other feedback Mary received only further reinforced the validity of her concept and our execution of this unique book: “I just want to keep touching it. Those decorative letters are sensational.”
