Journeys through Life & Love

When our client approached 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 her to see herself as he sees her, and to show her how much of life they still have to explore together.

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

Our answer was to write her book as a love letter to their three children, all under ten, showing them their mother through their father’s eyes: the woman he fell for across the distance between New York and London, and every version of her that has left him in awe in the twenty years since.

We wove the narrative from our interviews with him, old love letters (arranged by theme rather than date), collages of travel memorabilia and the kids’ artwork, 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:

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 a second print run the day their first copies arrived, 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.