An Elizabethan Bestiary: Retold

One challenge was combining illustrations that were of a variety of shapes (from the short and wide hippopotamus to the tall and thin cockatrice) with poems that ranged from four to 43 lines long. By keeping all the poems to one page, the book keeps to a consistent rhythm of image on left, poem on right. The images sit on the page in different ways and the poem bodies start at different points on the page to make each spread “feel right” based on the shape of the image and the poem body as well as the action and mood of the creature illustrated.

I made the book an engaging visual balance of word and picture by being sensitive to spacing on the page. In reference to the historical nature of the book’s content (17th-century Elizabethan bestiaries) and the medium of illustration (pen-and-ink drawings), the book was printed in black ink with red titling. Also, the cover and the spine were letterpress printed by hand with metal type to add to the tactile nature of the book. The poem titles were set in Jenson italic with swash caps.