FAD ('Fostering Arts and Design' association, Barcelona) organised a debate around the future of the book: what roles will its printed and digital versions take in the coming future? They comissioned me to design the publication which would hold the coversation that transpired among the 5 experts panel. This book about the future of the book was called 'The Digital Leter' ('La Lletra Digital' / 'La Letra Digital', laid out both in Catalan in Spanish) and had to, through a tight budget, a small format and a clean layout, communicate the dichotomy of values from both the printed and digital mediums.
The concept behind the design of the book was to create a bridge between the standard use of both digital and printed books. The layout was given a navigation system that resembled that of an e-book, with its characteristically electronic features, such as: zoom in/out, choose font size, jump between chapters, etc. Some iconography was implemented in vector. But slso, since the whole debate was sprung on the significance of paper as a physical medium, some other more illustrative icons were built as 3D paper sculptures, then photographed, and finally implemented in the book as such. It seemed like a fitting metaphor.
The layout, as requested by the client, was kept as clean as possible in order to not distract from the content and confer the basic message of the design concept. Two systems of 4 columns per spread were used throughout the whole book, with Garamond and Akkurat being the 2 font families chosen. This binary system was then finally paired with a choice of only 2 colors: a dark brown for text and a dark turquoise for accent.
The book used a light 90 grs/m offstet paper inside a softcover with perfect binding. The size was roughly DIN A5, to help convey the bridge-feeling between holding a printed book and an electronic one.
