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Design Category
Book design, 2004
Design firm
Pentagram Design, Inc. (Austin, Texas)
Collection
(2005) 50 Books/50 Covers of 2004
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We took on the book’s design to help set the stage for the relaunch of Trinity University Press. After a 10-year hiatus, the small academic publisher wanted to come back with a splash. The objective was to create a design that would really raise the bar. If you have an idea, you don’t have to have a big budget to accomplish it well.
Maps of the Imagination compares the art of writing to mapmaking. There was no illustration budget for the title, so we found an old medical journal that inspired the cover at a favorite local antiques store. The publication was old enough that copyright wasn’t an issue, so we combined a diagram of a brain with an old map. We liked the way the illustration of the brain resembled a continent.
We persuaded the press to choose paper good enough to support high-quality reproduction of maps throughout the text. It gives the reader a chance to see the specific map types referenced by the author, who’d already collected most of the artwork during his research.
The book’s design has won several awards in both the United States and Europe and has been featured in several design publications. These awards and additional publicity have made a name for the relaunched press and reconfirmed the importance of design.