Strangers
Our iconographic leafy-eyed tribute to the Green Man adorns Rebecca Tamas’ celebrated book of essays
Deep wide roots and radical shoots
In Strangers—longlisted for the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize—Rebecca Tamás explores where the human and nonhuman meet, and why this delicate connection just might be the most important relationship of our times.
Now in its fourth printing and fourth visual iteration, our design for Strangers has always retained the iconographic tribute to the Green Man in the original cover’s tuberous, leafy-eyed motif, with this concept of the British folkloric thread running through the book, and reinforced by those meandering tendrils and shoots that entwine its pages.
Each edition has followed a thematic palette, from the lush and damp green canvas of its first printing, the nocturnal relief of the second ‘Charcoal Edition’, to the organic, spring-like tones of its third expanded iteration (tied into the vernal equinox) and most recently, a bold pink and green combination (taken from one of its essays ‘On Watermelon’).
We developed the title spreads for each essay as a response to Robin of Makina Books’ concept of a library-card like grid—populating itself as the user traverses further and further through the book—with these geometric and linear forms complimenting the angular contrasts and piercing strokes of the exquisite Bely Display. Taking advantage of the boon of a full-colour printing spec, we also developed an interior palette, twinned thematically to each of the book’s essays.