Easter: Which one will you choose?

Each year we like to celebrate Easter with our clients. This year it seemed more important than ever. So we created a special Easter game. The story goes like this:

After the February quake, people here in Christchurch were suffering from ‘quake brain’ and then, for many, depression set in. 

We all needed to find a way to get our feelings out and then move forward.

Being designers, and all young at heart, we came up with our own version of this wonderful classic children’s game.

The Book Design way involved each of us writing down our thoughts on how the Earthquake made us feel. All the negative ones ...

• What will happen next?
• Constant tiredness
• Sadness at all the loss
• Feeling cheated

Then on top of these we wrote how we are going to move on ...

• Sharing with others
• Focusing on work
• Thankful for family and friends being safe
• Wanting to succeed
• Having unbroken bottles of wine

What we found was that we all shared the same fears and we all had many different ways to move forward. 

Our team was united and able to offer each other support in moving on.

Now we want to give back to you in thanks for all the fantastic support. If you didn't receive the game, but would like one. Just drop us a line.

What happens when a designer is let loose

For ages now we've been wanting to do a book that really goes out there. With NZ publishing budgets though that can be a really hard ask. Then along came Katie Haworth from Penguin.
'this is a project I’d really like you to go to town on. Go nuts, go mad, have fun, dance on a figurative design table and kick the plates off.'

So Anita did and we've just got to see the printed copy and are thrilled with the results of the Great Rescue Race by Raymond McGrath.

Click on any of the images if you'd like to see them larger

Raymond's illustrations are so zany and full of action that it took us a proofing round to really let loose and catch on to the wackyness that Raymond was trying to portray. Coloured text is not usually something that publishers are keen to let loose with. It limits the opportunities for selling International Rights as translating into other languages costs more for reprinting in all four colours. But sometimes the effect is just too good to pass by.

We are very aware of the need to balance illustrations and text. You know, white space and room around the words to let them speak. It's so awesome to see this book throw all those rules out the window. The text and images all become one and with the text being multi coloured it just works. The whole zany feel just flows into one and creates a page that jumps out at you.

Thanks Penguin for the opportunity to produce this book. It's one we are going to be really proud of for a long time to come.