Book design To the Letter, by Jade Design

Jade Design has designed To The Letter: A Journey Through a Vanishing World, a new release by Simon Garfield that explores the history of letter writing.

To The Letter cover
To The Letter cover

The cover was created by the publisher Canongate’s art director Rafaela Romaya.

Contents page
Contents page

To The Letter shows correspondence from writers including Jack Kerouac, Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen; as well as offering advice on opening greetings, unveiling the ingredients of invisible ink and showing what letters can reveal about their author’s lives.

Why Jane Austen's Letters are so Dull
Why Jane Austen’s Letters are so Dull

James Alexander, Jade Design founder, was recommended to Canongate through Garfield having designed his previous books Just My Type and On the Map.

To the Letter spread
To the Letter spread

The work was completed over two months this summer.

Inbox
Inbox

A monochrome, classic look and feel is used throughout.

Letters from Abroad
Letters from Abroad

Alexander says, ‘Each chapter of the book has its own motif, so I used that as a text divider to make it sympathetic to the area of interest each one explores. The design had to keep the reader interested but without interrupting the flow of the text. It had to still be enticing’.

The Consolations of Cicero, Seneca and Pliny the Younger
The Consolations of Cicero, Seneca and Pliny the Younger

The book is published on 24 October.

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