Books Perfect bound


A pared-back design delineates the output of upstart Litle Island Press almost as much as its exceptional atention to detail, with tpe and tactilit the nub. Danny Arter reports


Island in the seams


A


QUOTE FROM ANTOINE de Saint-Exupéry has served as “something of a mantra” for


the nascent poetry and translation publisher Litle Island Press (LIP), its founder and managing director Andrew Latimer explains, ahead of its launch part this evening at the London Review Bookshop. In keeping with the bestselling ethea of declutering guru Marie Kondo and stripped-back Scandinavian hygge, the Frenchman’s bon mot reads: “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing leſt to take away.”


It may be another instance of a publisher looking to communi- cate its sense of calm and quiet as a riposte to the perceived “informa- tion overload” to be found in pixel- lated realms. Yet LIP is choosing to do so in two notoriously diffi- cult fields (poetry and translation), so one may have expected a more aggressive, commercial approach and aesthetic. Latimer explains: “The front covers present the bare minimum of bibliographic infor- mation: title, author, publisher and series. No embellishment whatso- ever. Remove one aspect of these four ‘grid’ areas, and the delicate structure crumbles.” The press is invested in and commited to the printed book;


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Pictured above are two of Little Island Press’ launch titles, displaying its


austere cover-design grid, and right the brass plates with which the covers


were pressed, creating a debossed effect that is in some instances coloured.


in its launch catalogue, Latimer claims that “more people are start- ing to realise that reading is a three-dimensional experience” as a consequence of digital migration. Hence the fine production values of its titles, which its spartan cover designs accentuate. “The vast space in the centre of the cover, usually filled by some largely irrelevant glossy photograph, puts the reader in direct contact with the mate- rial from which the book has been made,” Latimer says. “It invites you to touch as well as to look.” Bold use of negative space is a relative rarit in the crowded, competitive cover-design field, but it is backed up by the qualit of materials, something that LIP’s founder says is a direct result of the subject mater it carries. “The main requirement was that [the paper stock] had to be weight,” he says. “Poetry books, by their very nature, produce a lot of white space. A meat Munken Lynx 150 [grams per square metre paper] prevents show-through almost completely. Coupled with its pleasant, just-off-


white tone, the paper creates a very pleasant reading experience. “But deciding on a suitable cloth for the bindings took a long time. Everyone we spoke to suggested one of two options: go for a smooth, man-made material like Wibalin [a more common, non-woven book covering that is fairly widely used on hardback editions atempting to convey a sense of gravitas], or increase the font size of the cover elements. We were quite stubborn. “In the end we came across


Wicotex’s natural fabrics, and we delineated the design-coded series according to the colours available: our Memento series of forgoten poets is on grey-flecked Wicotex Dubleta; the Budding New Poets has a free reign across its striking Brillianta rayon fabrics; and the Transits translation series is restricted to the darker, oceanic blues,” Latimer explains. The tricolor effect also enables


LIP to maintain the same minimal front-cover grid across all three series, as they are distinguished by the colour of their covering.


4th November 2016


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