Awards Book Archive

DC = MC2
  • Shortlisted

Designed by
Trisha Garner
Category
Best Designed Independent Book
Year
2017
Publisher
Real Film and Publishing

About the Designer

Trisha Garner has been a book designer for nearly two decades. She designs predominantly non-fiction and illustrated books, including cookbooks and memoirs, for a wide range of publishers from her studio in Collingwood, Melbourne. Trisha began her career as a graphic designer working in various studios before specialising in book design. She is also a sessional tutor at RMIT.

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Design Rationale

DC=MC2 is the biography of the late Dr Michael Cohen, a messy, brilliant scientist, obsessed with whiteboards and stationery, written for his two young children. The design challenge was to find inspiration in the idiosyncratic characteristics of this equation-scribbling intellectual and to find beauty in the whiteboard vernacular. The front cover image, selected to convey distracted genius, was enhanced with an ‘embroidered’ title, reminiscent of a lab coat. A glossy belly-band doubles as the whiteboard; a clip-on erasable whiteboard marker invites the reader to play; ink stains bleed into the fore-edges; and the hand-scrawled illustrations represent Dr Michael Cohen’s eccentricities.

Details
Dimensions
185 x 233 mm
No. pages
134
Special finishes
Canadian fold cover; tactile Japanese binding; the subjects favourite colours hidden inside French folds (it's a very international book!); printed on uncoated Mohawk Superfine Smooth; diecut cover for metal penholder; concealed magnets ‘snap’ the belly-band (that doubles as a whiteboard) shut.
Credits
Internal Design
Trisha Garner
Illustration
Trisha Garner
Typesetting
Trisha Garner
Printing
Bambra Press
Author
Romy Moshinsky