Upstart Press Award for Best Non-Illustrated Book 2019
Winner
Designer: Kate Barraclough, Kate Frances Design
Title: Women, Equality, Power
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Format: 234 x 153mm, 432pp, cased hardback with jacket. Round-backed hardback, case with silver foil and grey/silver head & tail bands, jacket with 90mm flaps.
Typography: Adobe Garamond Pro 11.5pt/14.65pt.
Judges’ comments: “The effectiveness of the grey with dark blue accents on the cover is a lovely surprise. It is very elegant, not stuffy or austere and lovely under the dust jacket; sophisticated for a serious book. Classy and lovely. Perfect for the topic but not stuffy. A really nuanced book overall.”
“With Helen Clark looking straight at you, the cover engages you immediately, with the equally weighted placement of title and author well balanced. Internally the type sits well on the page, is even in tone, and easy to read. A slight let down is that the choice of paper stock feels a bit cheap and suffers from an element of show through.”
“Unexpected, neutral, perhaps “masculine” palette. Pragmatic, straightforward, elegant title lock-up. Resolved section-opener/headings. Not sure about page number placement and leading between bullet points?”
“An odd test for the designer, how to set speeches. I wonder if any audio recordings were listened to? How to infuse the intonations and pauses and intakes of breath or raising tone or pitch to infer emphasis? In some ways many readers will be so familiar with Helen Clark’s voice that one can imagine recalling and reading in that voice. So the punctuation and typographic treatment can, as they have been, be treated in one font, Adobe Caslon, to deliver the stateswoman tone of voice. A classic choice handled well. And perhaps the point sizes of setting a nod towards the likely more senior readers?”
