Split complimentary tales by Adam Potterton

Split Complimentary Tales, written by Adam Potterton is a fiction book with three short stories. All three share the city of Johannesburg as backdrop: A man tries to collect a borrowed book, a women goes for a drink while waiting for a shuttle to Mars, and the author tries to unpacks their feelings towards Johannesburg. The book was designed, printed, folded and handbound as a student project for my Bachelors of Art (Graphic Design) final year, at Greenside Design Center College of Design.

The visual concept is a combination of bauhaus typography, cartography and linework. I decided to use a vintage (1897) map of the booming “city of gold” (Johannesburg) as a base. This also matches the Bauhaus principle of reusing existing imagery indirectly. This map was broken down in to aesthetic lineworks, which roughly resembles Johannesburg. At the start of each short story, a certain part of the map is highlighted as an ‘easter egg’ associated with each short story.

Like often the case with Bauhaus inspired designs, mine features high contrast and bold headers, clearly separating itself from the rest of the text. The imagery (cartography and lines) are used practically, to create interest and to balance out the copy on certain pages. Bauhaus designs typically rely on justified text, therefor I employed this tactic and included spot coloured paragraph markers to assist with legibility. The design was printed on warm toned signatures with a natural (or soft) texture. The entire map of Johannesburg was printed on tracing paper as a special interactive finish. To conclude, I performed a coptic stitch to bind the print.

The entire typography is set in a few weights of Founders Grotesk by Kris Sowersby.
See more images on Nicolas’ portfolio page..