Creative works portfolio - Giramondo Publishers

Full description

Background

The research contributes to the field of communication design practice, specifically the intersection of graphic design and literature. To reinvigorate their long-term commitment to Australian literature, Giramondo Publishing, award-winning publishers of emerging and established Australian writers, commenced the revision of their design strategy in 2019. Methodological connections between publishing strategy and visual identity design are under-researched in publication design.

Contribution

The research tested the selection of a practical set of components to communicate the consistent quality and the variety of Giramondo’s publishing list, and provide the basis for the company’s design revisions. The cover designs re-establish and unify the company’s identity, signify the literary values it endorses, identify the distinct types of literature it publishes, the uniqueness of each book, and point towards future systems within the identity’s whole.

Significance

After a survey of available Australian book design practitioners, I was commissioned by Giramondo – high-profile publishers of prominent Australian literary authors, including Alexis Wright, Gerald Murnane, Judith Beveridge and Brian Castro, and recent recipients of a prestigious Australia Council Four-Year Funding Grant 2021-2024 – to evolve the company’s long-standing, award winning design collaborations with Harry Williamson, Hall of Fame inductee of the Australian Book Designers Association and the Australian Graphic Designers Association. After undergoing the company’s rigorous editorial processes, including close consultation between designer and publisher, and case by case author consultation, the published designs cover a range of genres – poetry, fiction and non-fiction – but the typographical consistency and imagery ranging from medieval to surreal, mark them out as distinctively Giramondo titles. A Body of Water by Beverley Farmer was awarded Best Designed Literary Fiction Cover, ABDA, 2021.