Interabang designs Royal Mail 2013 Year Book

The hardback book is presented in a box featuring a collage of dates from the timelines used within the book, aiming to move away from previous years’ ‘magazine’ approach to editorials and spreads, according to Interabang.

The consultancy was appointed to the project in September last year. Visual timelines were used to bring together the diverse range of subjects covered by the stamps, including Doctor Who, London Underground and Football Heroes.

Adam Giles, Interabang co-founder, says, ‘[Royal Mail] asked us to think about ways we can push the physical format, so we used throwout [extended pullout page] sections for some of the issues’.

He adds, ‘One of the challenges for us was to come up with all these unconventional timelines, but keeping a good pace throughout the book. We didn’t want every page to be loud – you have to pace it, so we didn’t want two photographic timelines next to each other, or two illustrated ones.’

Illustrations by Telegramme, John See, Rebecca Sutherland and Simon Pemberton are used throughout, alongside photography by Robyn Vickers, John Ross, Paul Grundy and Gary McParland and editorial by a number of different experts too accompany each timeline.

A scarf knitted by Grannies Inc. is used to illustrate the Football Heroes stamp timeline.

Different typefaces were used for each section, including Champion for the Football Heroes stamps and a license-plate font for the Auto Legends stamps.

The Year Book is available in a limited edition of 10,000, and a further limited edition of 160 leather bound books are also available.