This week, PaperSpecsGallery.com calls attention to the "Lovesong" chapbook.
"The precious and secretive nature of love and loving—as described by the author in her poems—is reflected in the design of the cover which becomes a hidden treasure to discover and to behold...The design reinforced that the concept of love found—and/or love lost—is bound by a thread."
—Mayda Freije Makdessi, Designer
The romantic souls at Brooklyn’s Communica Design transformed the poetic verse and watercolor paintings of Beirut artist Afaf Zurayk into a light and airy 56-page meditation on love and all its complications.
To watch the video, click here or on the video below:
Held closed with a snug-fitting, watercolor-painted belly band, the brochure’s soft Marcate Tintoretto outer cover with felt marked finish and deckled edges further enhances the dreamlike quality of the 19-color paintings within.
And like any dream, the cover turns out not to be all that it seems. Why, we might ask, do we not see the Singer sewn binding on the outside of the brochure? Because Beirut printer Calligraph has cleverly bound one of the author’s paintings to the inside pages and then folded it over twice to create a double-thick cover. As an added benefit, you can enjoy the painting uninterrupted by the binding running through the center.
Ultimately, the cottony paper and gentle watercolors make the "Lovesong" chapbook—limited to just 1,000 copies—the print equivalent of spying a former lover through the rain-slicked window of a warm café. Ain’t love grand?
Sabine Lenz is the founder of PaperSpecs.com, the first online paper database and community specifically designed for paper specifiers.
Growing up in Germany, Sabine started her design career in Frankfurt, before moving to Australia and then the United States. She has worked on design projects ranging from corporate identities to major road shows and product launches. From start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, her list of clients included Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Deutsche Bank, IBM and KPMG.
Seeing designers struggle worldwide to stay current with new papers and paper trends inspired Sabine to create PaperSpecs, an independent and comprehensive Web-based paper database and weekly e-newsletter. She is also a speaker on paper issues and the paper industry. Some refer to her lovingly as the "paper queen" who combines her passion for this wonderful substrate called paper with a hands-on approach to sharing her knowledge.