II concurso nacional de poesía joven Rafael Cadenas 2017

This book is a compilation of poems submitted by Venezuelan poets to the II. Rafael Cadenas National Youth Poetry Competition. In 2018, it was awarded an Honorary Appreciation in the Best Book Design from all over the World competition held in Leipzig, Germany. The two typeface families used in this book, Lira Sans and Violeta, had not been officially published to that date.

The following is the jury’s appraisal:

The cover beckons with an expanse of enticing, intense salmon-pink. Printed on it: the title, compactly in ink blue. The barcode – usually a tiresome addition – adorns the spine here as traversing lines that spill over to the front and back. On the inside cover, a truncated portrait of the writer Rafael Cadenas, whose gaze seems to watch over the contributions for the National Young Poetry Competition in Venezuela. The poems by 26 individualists have individual forms as well – their verse lengths, structures, peculiarities of typesetting: contour type, italicisation, indents, unusual word spacing. Which makes it tricky for the designer. The name of the competition is presented as a vignette, together with double page numbering, at the top on the left side of the left-hand pages – this defines the double page as an open space. The font is chosen particularly carefully, used for the first time ever in this book. The serifs are designed as fluent recollections of a quill pen; the structure of an Antiqua is alive in the grey tone – and its bold-fine style is borrowed from the Wild West versions of the Egyptienne typeface. This is noticeable on the rounded minuscules, but is even more striking in the bold capitals where the low lines lie horizontally. Writing, book printing, Latin America – these features are breathed into the font modestly yet confidently. The book designer casts a spell on the competition documentation, turning it into a document of graphic poetry.