Oor Mad History Book Cover

This the cover of Oor Mad History, a book I have been designing for CAPS, an independent advocacy organisation which provides collective advocacy to different groups of people across Lothian with mental health issues. The book celebrates the community history of mad activism and collective advocacy in Lothian, 2010-2020, and follows a book celebrating the organisation’s first ten years, published in 2010, which captured people’s memories and stories from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. This new book shares the memories and experiences of people who have been involved in recent years and looks at what has happened in local collective advocacy and activism from 2010. 

For the design of the book, I collaborated with members of the Oor Mad History collective advocacy group, who steered, through a series of consultation meetings, how the book would look and feel. The group took inspiration from book covers they liked, sending me images of covers which I used as a starting point to work up various options for the cover. The initial brief for the cover was to create a celebratory feel, so, based on an idea for the cover by one of the group – a painting that featured bunting – I created a design based on abstracted bunting with a palette of colours sampled from the painting. 

The group felt that the bunting was a little too celebratory for the cover and didn’t reveal the complex issues faced by the group, which are not always positive. The group suggested that an idea of key words and phrases associated with the collective advocacy movement, presented as graffiti on a brick wall, might be more ‘provocative’ and might tie in better with the activist side of collective advocacy and the struggle to have their voices heard. I presented several versions of this idea along with an alternative typographic treatment that created a wall of words – this was the version that the group felt was strongest and we went with this idea for the cover, with the bunting appearing on the inside of the cover and on the title page (below) where the title was accompanied by a sub-title, A celebration of collective advocacy and mad activism in Lothian 2010-2020, to give a context for the bunting.

I am proud to have collaborated on this project and it has been really interesting to learn more about the work of CAPS, the Oor Mad History collective advocacy group, and the struggles faced by people with mental health issues. Feedback for the design has been very positive and I look forward to seeing the finished book. The book is being printed by Gomer in Wales – we have approved proofs and the book is due in mid-December in time for the celebrations to mark CAPS’ 30th anniversary.

Below is the back cover of the book.

You can find out more about CAPS here.