Publication

“Time Travelers” book series

Designer: Miglė Vasiliauskaitė

Client: Aukso žuvys

Passengers in Time – a translation project that brings together works by contemporary European writers that open up an unexpected perspective on history. Each piece takes you to a different historical period, to different parts of the world, and brings you together with the most interesting characters. The readers will be taken on a so called time travel through books – from the distant past to the present day. The book series is unified through an illustration. When the books are arranged in the correct order, their backs form a picture. This encourages readers to collect a complete series of books and also becomes a visually interesting accent on ones bookshelf. The design of the book covers is a minimalist, typographic composition without any illustrative elements – this lets not to oveshadow the delicate and subtle illustration on the bookspines, but at the same time the constructive geometry and size of the font shapes stand out. The titles are composed in an extra-large bold font with reduced spaces between letters, making them look like they almost don’t fit the width of the book, while moving syllables and enlarging the spaces between words creates a typographic play. The color palette for book covers is created from the shades of the illustration. Each book has a different contrasting color combination, which reflects best the spirit of the book. The design of the book series has some non-standard features. Interestingly, there is no repetition of the author's surname and book title on book spines as it is a main stage for the illustration. It could be a bit difficult to find a specific book on the shelf, but as a counterweight, the covers are bright, bold and contrasting which makes it easier to recognize it. Also atypical is the addition of a translator name next to the author and title on the book cover. For us the translator is the first traveler in time through a specific story when translating it in Lithuanian. The series design concept responds to the theme of the time flow. The logo of the book series depicts a person diving into a wormhole, which, according to the theory of physics, would make it possible to travel in time. Also, it is no coincidence that the inner paper of the books turns yellowish with time as if it records the time current and aging of the book.