Emma Johnson of Freerange Press approached me in early 2016 about designing a book about journalism in Aotearoa. After a lot of back and forth, and late nights going over proofs, Don’t Dream It’s Over: Reimagining Journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand was published in August 2016.

One of the most difficult aspects of the book was that, due to budget restrictions, I was limited to black and white pages for 95% of the 366 page book. It was already going to have a serious tone, being so heavy with text. Using a simple grid structure for the different types of content (opinion piece, conversation, interview), the book feels stoic and informative without being dry or feeling like a textbook.

The editorial team were keen to include a visual key/marker system to link the different articles together. They were seperated into chapters, but the editors wanted to highlight the thematic links between each of the pieces. The tag system was born out of this conversation, shown in the contents page, in the title of each piece, and in constellation maps at the start of each chapter. This constellation idea fed back into the design of the book, and informed the inner and outer cover pages.