On Trampolining

Our literally-glittering visual tribute to Rebecca Perry’s lyrical gymnastics memoir

Book
The front cover of the book 'On Trampolining' by Rebecca Perry. It has a hot pink background and white serif text. In the centre is an abstract, vectorised illustration depicting a person in a pink leotard, upside-down in mid-somersault, holding their knees tight to their body. Concentric circles span outward from this figure to the edge of the cover and beyond. The Makina Books logo sits within a circle in the top-right corner, followed by a second, linked circle containing the text 'Non-Fiction'. Two review quotation sit centrally at the top and bottom; the top one from Max Porter reads 'A taut masterclass in poetic memoir' and the bottom one from Inua Ellams reads 'A jewel of an essay'.
The back cover of the book 'On Trampolining' by Rebecca Perry. It has a hot pink background and white serif text. Two paragraphs of text to the left sit alongside the edges of dotted circles to the right that are flowing onto the back cover from the front.

Choosing air over earth

Our design of Rebecca Perry’s fascinating poetic memoir is a visual paean to a childhood in the 1990s gymnastics arena—replete with nods to municipal sports halls, plastic trophies, sparkling leotards, iron-on patches and crude, diagrammatic sketches.

Our approach to the design of On Trampolining aimed to pit the taught idea of anxious, girlhood anticipation against a freedom of spinning high through the air in seemingly perpetual motion. Its cover signifies both of these things: the dream leotard, hot pink and shimmering with beads (anticipation) forms the concentric circles that span outward from the central figure (motion).

The figure itself, in mid-pike, is an interpretation of the illustration on one of Rebecca’s original trophies–one of those mass-produced objects of school and the extracurricular that are universally embedded in all of us that have walked such municipal corridors, even if they were not necessarily ours to lift in celebration!

The use of the Cooper-influenced Gelica ties this theme together typographically by prompting a reminiscence of the kind of soft, rounded serifs synonymous with the glued-on felt lettering of childhood fabrics and sportswear that hadn’t yet petered out by the time the 1990s came to a close.

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The inside cover spread of the book 'On Trampolining' by Rebecca Perry. The left page is partially obscured by the flap of the book's front cover, which has a hot pink background and the edges of three white, dotted circles alongside a paragraph of text. Below the flap is a repeated pattern of an abstracted, tumbling trampolinist on top of a black background. The right-hand page has two paragraphs of text centred vertically.
A spread from the book 'On Trampolining' by Rebecca Perry. Paragraphs of black text run across two white pages.
A spread from the book 'On Trampolining' by Rebecca Perry. Across both pages, flick-book-esque frames of animation depict a white outlined figure jumping across a black-background, from the right-hand page, into a somersault, and landing on the left-hand page.