Journeys through Life & Love

When our client, Barak, came to us, his brief was disarmingly simple: "My wife never likes anything I buy for her. I want you to make the best gift in the world for her, for her 40th birthday."

His goal, though, was anything but simple. He wanted his wife to see herself the way he sees her, and to show their children, in turn, just how much more the two of them still have to grow and explore together.

But how do you tell someone a story they already lived? How do you capture the gap between how we see the people we love and how they see themselves?

Our answer was to tell their twenty-year love story as a love letter to their children — his wife, seen entirely through his eyes. We wove together a narrative built from our interviews with him, old love letters (arranged not by date but by theme), collages made from travel memorabilia and pieces created by their kids, photographs layered with text, and bespoke illustrations of the places that shaped their story.

His wife is a true free spirit and a lover of the natural world, and the book's design had to match her in kind:

1. Typography that balanced the intimacy of a hand-typed letter — Adobe Handwriting Ernie — with the contemporary clarity of Etna X Condensed (paired across Regular and Light weights) and Elementa Regular.

2. A hand-sewn, exposed binding, left visible as part of the story rather than hidden.

3. Crush Citrus (Agrumi) by Favini for the paper stock — an ecological fine-art paper made from citrus by-products, alongside residues of grape, cherry, lavender, corn, olive, coffee, kiwi, hazelnut, and almond.

Needless to say, his wife was thrilled. He ordered more copies before we'd even finished the first, so their story could be passed down through the generations still to come.

REGIONS COVERED: New York, London, Tel Aviv, and countless other places they holidayed in.