During a trip to Japan in the summer of 2015, we had the unique opportunity of meeting Rosa Park and Rich Stapleton of CEREAL Magazine who coincidentally were traveling in Japan at the same time. We had always admired their work and meeting with them left a lasting impression on us. In April of 2016, Rich and Rosa later reached out to us with their exciting personal project, ‘These Islands’. Having now lived in the UK for several years, Rosa had realized how amazing the British Isles were and yet how little most people knew of the rich landscape. ‘These Islands’ was in many ways, an ode to the country that had been such a big part of their lives.
Research & Concept
We first began by laying out the photos and text onto the canvas looking to create visual interest in the layout. Yet as we continued exploring options, we felt it was important to establish a more meaningful foundation to base the design upon. During the following three weeks, our team tried to look further into the historical and geographical aspects of the landscape. The historical documents and maps we found provided us with a great amount of inspiration—some of which we ended up including in the appendix section of the final book. We also drew inspiration from British architecture—the unifying columns, brick walls and windows of buildings.
As we dived into the design, one of our goals was to limit the typesetting to two to three treatments. By refraining from larger type sizes, our solution to give distinction to the chapter openings then was found in using half-cut pages. This allowed us to create an eye-catching variation in the book while revealing the texture of the land beneath.
