Praspar Press

Our ongoing partnership with the micro-publishing champion of contemporary Maltese literature

Books

Scintillas

Praspar Press’ anthologies of Maltese writing showcases new prose, poetry and literary nonfiction by a selection of emerging and established Maltese writers from across the world.

Scintilla comes directly from Latin, where it carries the meaning of “spark”—that is, a bright flash such as you might see from a burning ember. In English, however, our use of scintilla is restricted to the figurative sense of “spark”—a hint or trace of something that barely suggests its presence.

A definition of the word 'scintilla' from Merriam-Webster
A render of the front cover for the book ‘Scintillas: New Maltese Writing 1’. The background is a light, pinky-beige and the text is black. Six shapes with triple outlines adorn the cover, each resembling an abstract form of a household object—a mirror, a glass etc. Each of the outlines is a white colour, and the three left-hand most shapes are filled in three different bright colours—the top shape in a greeny-sky-blue, the middle in a bright, sunny yellow and the bottom in a rich, striking red. Overlaid partially across the top blue shape is the word ‘Scintillas’ in a decorative, italic serif typeface. In simpler serif italics, the middle yellow shape contains the words ‘New Maltese Writing’, with a number ‘1’ to its right. The bottom red shape contains the words ‘edited by Jen Calleja & Kat Storace’ in a bold, geometric sans serif.
A render of the front cover for the book ‘Scintillas: New Maltese Writing 2’. The background is a hot pink and the text is black. Six shapes with triple outlines adorn the cover, each resembling an abstract form of a whole or partial piece of fruit. Each of the outlines is a bleached canvas colour, and the three left-hand most shapes are filled in three different bright colours—the top shape in citrus yellow, the middle in green and the bottom in orange. Overlaid partially across the top yellow shape is the word ‘Scintillas’ in a decorative, italic serif typeface. In simpler serif italics, the middle green shape contains the words ‘New Maltese Writing’, with a number ‘2’ to its right. The bottom orange shape contains the words ‘edited by Jen Calleja & Kat Storace’ in a bold, geometric sans serif.
A render of the front cover for the book ‘Scintillas: New Maltese Writing 3’. The background is a bright, sunny yellow and the text is black. Six shapes with triple outlines adorn the cover, each resembling an abstract form of a snack—a soda bottle, sweet wrapper, a half-eaten pastizz etc. Each of the outlines is an orangey-red colour. Overlaid partially across the top-left bottle shape is the word ‘Scintillas’ in a decorative, italic serif typeface. In simpler serif italics, the middle shape contains the words ‘New Maltese Writing’, with a number ‘3’ to its right. The bottom-most shape contains the words ‘edited by Jen Calleja & Kat Storace’ in a bold, geometric sans serif.

A spark of inspiration

For Scintillas, we were influenced by an amalgamation of the Latin and English roots of its title—a literal spark-like ember as seen in the pattern of each anthology’s interior covers, and the concept of the imperceptible or intangible.

Praspar’s wonderful founders and editors Jen Calleja and Kat Storace had outlined a wish to explore graphic grids and patterns to create a cover that would form the basis for this ongoing series, and the final approach was somewhat a deconstructed version of that concept: intricately-bordered geometric forms drifting (scintilla-like!) inside and beyond the cover’s edge, text constrained into boxes and then bursting out.

The inside cover spread from the third edition of Scintillas. The left-hand page is made up of a pattern comprised of orange and yellow spark-like shapes, floating upwards across a dark brown background. The opposite page is white, and almost completely blank, save for the Praspar Press logo and the text 'Contemporary Maltese writing in English & English translation', right at the bottom.
The inside cover spread from the third edition of Scintillas. The left-hand page is made up of a pattern comprised of pink and yellow spark-like shapes, floating upwards across a lime-green background. The opposite page is white, and almost completely blank, save for the Praspar Press logo and the text 'Contemporary Maltese writing in English & English translation', right at the bottom.
The inside cover spread from the third edition of Scintillas. The left-hand page is made up of a pattern comprised of light-orange and greeny-blue spark-like shapes, floating upwards across an orangey-brown background. The opposite page is white, and almost completely blank, save for the Praspar Press logo and the text 'Contemporary Maltese writing in English & English translation', right at the bottom.
The inside cover spread from the first edition of Scintillas. The background colour for both pages is a cool green-blue. The left-hand page contains small print and the logo for the National Book Council, whilst the opposite page is an alternative toned down version of the front cover: six shapes with triple white outlines, each resembling an abstract form of a household object—a mirror, a glass etc. Overlaid partially across the top shape is the word ‘Scintillas’ in a decorative, italic serif typeface. In simpler serif italics, the middle shape contains the words ‘New Maltese Writing’, with a number ‘1’ to its right. The bottom shape contains the words ‘edited by Jen Calleja & Kat Storace’ in a bold, geometric sans serif.
An interior spread from the first edition of Scintillas. The two pages contain the index for the anthology, with the title 'Fables/Hrejjef' at the top of the left-hand page, and 'Reflections/Riflessi' at the top of the right, both in a bold, italicised, characterful serif font.
An interior spread from the first edition of Scintillas. Paragraphs of small, serif text run across both white pages. At the top of the left-hand page, larger, bold italicised text reads 'The Lights That Call Her On', with the words 'Daniel Vella' below in a much smaller sans-serif.

Dream themes

For each anthology, a different overarching theme inspired the colour palette and the often semi-abstract motifs that populate the cover and interior spreads.

For Scintillas 1 we focussed on shapes that had ‘domestic leanings’—a mirror, a glass etc.—alongside a palette that depicted a specific representation of Malta itself: a sun-bleached background punctuated with warm reds, yellows and a deep ocean-like blue.

With the sophomore Scintillas 2, it was The Year of the Prickly Pear™ and this and other mouth-watering and markedly Maltese fruit–a citrus, a fig, an apricot etc.—adorned a cover punctuated with hot, vivid and juicy greens, pinks, oranges and yellows.

Scintillas 3 takes a 1970s confectionary twist with an assortment of salty and sweet items (reflecting the division of the works within) aiming to depict the remnants of a table in a Maltese snack-bar of that era, replete with a half-eaten pastizz  and a palette that honours packets of Twistees and bottles of Kinnie.

An interior spread from the first edition of Scintillas. The background colour is a rich, sunny yellow. In the centre of the left page is an abstract mirror shape with a triple red outline, and in the bottom-right the top of a square emerges from off the page. The right-hand page has another, identical, truncated square in the top-right corner, and the words 'Reflections/Riflessi' centred in huge, charismatic, calligraphic and italicised black text.
An interior spread from the third edition of Scintillas. The left-hand page has a sun-yellow background, with a red-outlined tomato illustration in the bottom-left corner, and the words 'Sweet + Salty' in charismatic, calligraphic and italicised large brown text. The opposite page is almost a mirror image of its predecessor, in both colour and layout, with the only difference being the text reads, in Maltese, 'Helu-Mielah'.
An interior spread from the second edition of Scintillas. The background colour is a rich, deep orange. In the centre of the left page is an abstract shape of a lime with a triple green outline. Two further shapes with the same outlines feature on the opposite page; the topmost shape resembles an apple and floats centrally, whilst the bottom-most peaks in from the bottom-right hand corner and resembles a segment from an orange. The words 'Juice/Meraq' adorn the centre of this page, in huge, charismatic, calligraphic and italicised black text.

Typographically speaking

One of the other goals of Jen and Kat’s brief was to establish a body typeface that could be used across all Praspar publications—an elegant, legible and multi-weight choice that would take an ever-so-slightly embellished lead from Romie, the font of Praspar’s logotype. Needing to compliment both the pure theatre of Scintillas with the ultra-expressive typographic punctuation of Swear in its ‘cilati’ style, and the comparative restraint of the other titles, Meno Text was a very worthy winner.

The front cover for the book 'What will it take for me to leave' by Loranne Vella, translated by Kat Storace. The background is a bright, sunny yellow, and the text is black, in an elegant, serious lowercase serif font. Two doorway-like rectangles overlap each other; one is an empty white outline, whilst the other contains a black and white photograph of an unknown person—only the bottom half of their body is visible—entering a door, their hand on the latch pulling it shut behind them. The top-right of the photo is overlapped by a dotted white circle, and the bottom-left is touched by a looping dotted white thread.
The back cover for the book 'What will it take for me to leave' by Loranne Vella. The background is a bright, sunny yellow, and the text is black, in an elegant, serious lowercase serif font. The page mainly consists of three paragraphs of text, but the bottom portion contains a white outlined illustration of a key, which has a dotted white thread attached to its base, which then loops up and down and disappears off the right-side of the cover.

what will it take for me to leave

Alongside Scintillas, we undertook the creation of a separate but interlinked aesthetic for a parallel series of publications focussing on translations of works by single authors.

The inside cover spread from the book 'What will it take for me to leave' by Loranne Vella. The left-hand page is made up of a terrazzo-style pattern, made up of black, grey and yellow specks, scattered over a white background. The opposite page is white, and almost completely blank, save for the Praspar Press logo and the text 'Contemporary Maltese writing in English & English translation', right at the bottom.
An interior spread from the book 'What will it take for me to leave' by Loranne Vella. The left-hand page contains the text 'mill-bieb 'il gewwa', and an outlined illustration of a key, which has a dotted black thread attached to its base, which travels a wavy path from the top of the page to the bottom. The opposite page is an indexed list of the works contained within.
An interior spread from the book 'What will it take for me to leave' by Loranne Vella. Paragraphs of text run across both pages, and at the top of the left page, in larger, bold, italicised text are the words 'window shopping', followed by 'fil-vetrina' in a much smaller font.
An interior spread from the book 'What will it take for me to leave' by Loranne Vella. A full-bleed black and white photograph takes up both pages. The photo depicts two hands, taken from above, handing a slice of bread to another hand. Below a grid-patterned tablecloth can be seen, and on top of this sits two more slices of bread and what looks like a jar.

Our approach to the cover of Loranne Vella’s collection of enigmatic, dark, and at times humorous short stories (deftly translated from the Maltese by Kat Storace) explores the themes evoked by the words ‘behind closed doors’—the phrase a translation from the original Maltese title Mill-bieb ’il ġewwa. Metaphorically, this provokes notions of secrets held in our private spaces, the dark and light of the interior and the exterior, the escape of the inside via daydreams or memories of an outside that we cannot always quite open our doors to find…

Retaining a graphical symbiosis with Scintillas, the “abstract geometric shapes, with domestic leanings” in this instance are doorways (apertures, portals) that may both bind and free us physically and allegorically, enmeshed here with one of Zvezdan Relji’s photographs from the book’s interior. As the sun sets and the clock ticks, the twisting chain that holds the key meanders away out of reach onto the book’s back cover.

A render of the front cover for the book ‘The Lives and Deaths of K. Penza’ by Clare Azzopardi. The background is a light mauve and the text is set in a black, elegant serif font. Four different insets of the same collage—which is made up of several cutout photographic elements intermingling with various other disparate parts, such as newspaper cuttings, cutout numbers and swathes of vivid orange paint—are scattered across the cover, with a wavy white dotted line running beneath. Three of the inset images are rectangular with cutout corners, and have transparent, offset outlined “shadows”, while one is circular and has a keyhole shape cutout in the centre. Text in the bottom right corner below the author’s name reads “translated by Albert Gatt”. The Praspar logo, which is made up of the white outlines of three geometric shapes placed within an outlined white square, is placed in the top-right corner.
A render of the back cover for the book ‘The Lives and Deaths of K. Penza’ by Clare Azzopardi. The background is a light mauve and the text is set in a black, elegant serif font. The topmost part of the text reads, in a larger, italicised font,

The Lives and Deaths of K. Penza

With the design for the second book in this series—Albert Gatt’s translation of Clare Azzopardi’s meta-detective novel—we were able to play with the original blueprint, cementing certain elements and manipulating others.

A render of the inside cover of the book ‘The Lives and Deaths of K. Penza’ by Clare Azzopardi. The left hand page is made up of knotted vertical lines, alternately black and light mauve in colour, that stretch the whole height of the page. Aligned to the bottom of the right-hand page is the text “Contemporary Maltese writing in English & English translation”, and the Praspar Press logo, which is made up of the outlines of three geometric shapes placed within an outlined square.
A render of two interior pages of the book ‘The Lives and Deaths of K. Penza’ by Clare Azzopardi, which consists of several paragraphs of text in an elegant serif font. The right-hand page has a knotted vertical border at its right edge and the heading ‘Our Inspector’, rendered in capitals at the top left. The page numbers 60 and 61 respectively are placed at centre-bottom of each page.
A render of two interior pages of the book ‘The Lives and Deaths of K. Penza’ by Clare Azzopardi. Both pages have a deep black background, with large white serif text. On the left-hand page, text in the top-left corner reads “Part One”. A horizontal, knotted line that stretches to the far edge of the right-hand page sits alongside this text. Below are two abstract rectangular rectangle outlines, with cutout corners; one is positioned to the right of the page, just below the text and the other is in the bottom left corner, bisected by the page's leftmost edge. On the right-hand page, below the knotted line, is the text “Sounds from beyond death” in tightly-spaced italics.

Here the frames are multiple, splintered, but also ornate—a nod to the forms of traditional Maltese ironwork. In collaboration with Kat and Jen from Praspar, we created a collage comprised of several photographic elements intermingling with various other disparate parts—newspaper cuttings, cutout numbers, swathes of vivid orange paint—with these multiple fragments within fragments intended to evoke the meta nature of the novel: of fiction and life intertwined.

On the back cover, the key motif appears again, but here its form is ancient, rusted and yet again out of reach—hiding some potential clue to Azzopardi’s mystery. The interior cover continues these motifs of ancient ironwork, of unfamiliar Maltese streets and locked gates, and this bar-like form is used too within the book to delineate—along with a pulp-noir transformation of the title typography—the excerpted works of the mysterious K. Penza that are interwoven between the voice of the story’s protagonist.

A render of the front and back of a Maltese Alphabet card. The front has a deep turquoise background and black text. The words 'L-Alfabett Malti' sit at the top in a charismatic, calligraphic, italicised font and then lists the alphabet, example words and their translations. The back of the card is a terrazzo-inspired pattern—yellow, red and blue specks are scattered over a light, green-blue background—and the Praspar Press logo and the text 'New Maltese Writing' sits in the bottom-left corner.
The terrazzo-inspired Maltese Alphabet card
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