Portret trumienny
“Portret trumienny” is the debut novel of Kuba Wojtaszczyk (interview with Milena Buszkiewicz for Booklips – in polish), a young, promising writer and cultural studies graduate. Originally I was comissioned for few illustrations, but I ended up creating the cover, designing and preparing the whole book for print and virtually the entire visual stuff related to the book. The novel was self-published in small quantity.
Color-wise I wanted to juxtapose the traditional coffin portrait with a very non-rural and non-Polish color with a cultural/artistic character – a persian green. Additionally I went with two complementary colors.
After reading the text I had a long list of ideas – I decided to go with seven of them, but after some thinking with Kuba, we rejected one, too controversial concept. For a clearer overview we added a non-architectural plan of the house at the end of the book.
The main inspiration for me was the visual legacy of the Catholic Church and a provincional design rooted in the PRL.
The fonts in the book are Chaparral Pro from Carol Twombly and Halis Rounded from Ahmet Altun. Due to a small size, the text is placed within a relatively simple grid with chapters beginning on new pages, subsections separated by •s and blank backs for illustrations.
You will most likely get a new copy of the book after a short walk to one of Warsaw’s bookstore: Pępek Sztuki, Super Salon, Bookoff or Baczyński. But I can’t promise anything.