Daughters of the Silk Roads

Daughters of the Silk Roads is a publication that collects together a body of work by Scottish-born Chinese artist Elaine Woo MacGregor that engages with history, myth, and memory to create bold visual narratives of womanhood and intrepid exploration. The artist was a recipient of the RSA Blackadder Houston Mid-Career Travel Award in 2023 which gave her an opportunity to travel to Hong Kong, where she had lived in as a child, to consider the juxtaposition between traditional Chinese culture and the ultra-modern image of China today. A central theme of this series of works is the female traveller, riding on horseback and connecting the historical Silk Roads trade routes with the artist’s own journey of discovering her heritage.

I worked very closely with the artist on this book. We met and had an interesting discussion about the Silk Roads series and how the book might function as part of forthcoming exhibitions that would feature this series of works. The artist did not see the book as a catalogue but more as an artist’s publication that would accompany the exhibition and that would exist in its own right. We talked about the content of the book which would include images of the artist’s work alongside an essay, an interview, and other relevant textual information. Elaine was also keen to include images of source materials as research is central to her practice – and particularly to this body of work.

Elaine had initially thought  to produce a modest book, possibly A6 (105 x 148 mm) in a small edition. I suggested that A5 might be a better size as it would show the detail of the work better – we looked at various examples of publications that I had designed around this size and Elaine agreed that A5 would be the way forward. I suggested that 48 pages would be a good starting point as it could comfortably include the essays and images – though the artist was a little hesitant that there possibly might not be enough work to justify that page count.

I had initially asked Elaine to provide a rough mock-up of the book showing the running order of her paintings but I decided that it might be a better idea for me to design a first draft layout of the book showing options of how the temporary, placeholder images that the artist had supplied could be laid out on the page – one image per two-page spread, two images per spread, full-bleed spreads, image details etc. I used placeholder text to show the position of the essays, captions etc. Artists and visually-led people often react better to a rough visual like this as it is clearer to see, in a PDF, how the pages progress throughout the publication and how the images relate to each other.

Over the Christmas break, Elaine worked on the image order and also commissioned an essay from art historian and author Ruth Millington and an interview with  art historian, artist and cultural storyteller Ferren Gipson. Both of these texts offer an illuminating insight into the artist’s practice and position it in a wider context and set of references. The texts book-end the image pages. Elaine also commissioned new photographs of her work from Robin Mair.

We convened again in the new year when I placed the final texts and images in the layout, in the order that Elaine suggested. I sent a second draft to Elaine for consideration, including suggestions for cover images and treatment. Having spent some time with the second draft, Elaine came back with some interesting ideas for the treatment of the cover type: is it possible to try a couple of things – a pastel neon colour or a clean block font or slightly digitised/space retro font (I’m channelling futuristic vibes). I worked through some iterations taking on board Elaine’s prompts, including a version using Afronaut, a decorative typeface designed by Mateusz Machalski and inspired by vernacular and futuristic lettering from the designer's travels in Africa. Many letters have different forms so I was able to mix and match glyphs to create a unique calligraphic treatment of the cover title that I think, with the addition of a neon yellow, reflected the ideas that Elaine had proposed. Elaine agreed and I used Afronaut to typeset the titles throughout the book, creating a link to the cover. 

I set the text of the book in Calluna with Calluna Sans for the captions and titles. Calluna has a nice ‘sparkle’ on the page which I think works well with Elaine’s images while Calluna Sans has a clarity which works well with information such as captions. Calluna has decorative discretionary ligatures which when activated create a visual connection to Afronaut, matching its calligraphic sweeps. I wasn’t totally convinced, as these discretionary ligatures draw too much attention to themselves and disrupt the reading experience. I sent examples to Elaine with and without discretionary ligatures and we both agreed that they were a little too much.

There was a modest budget for the publication so we discussed possible print solutions. As a starting point I got an estimate for offset printing then started investigating digital printing. I suggested that, with the budget and with the number of copies, it would be more cost-effective to print the book digitally. I have used digital printing for several recent projects, most notably for catalogues that I designed for The Scottish Gallery. In the last few years, digital printing has improved considerably and with four colour CMYK digital printing and the ability to print on uncoated paper, the print quality is often equal to conventional offset printing. 

I recently used Mixam, an online printer, to produce a set of postcards for the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust – everyone was delighted with the results. The cost, in this case, was far more economical than using a traditional printer. The downside of using an online printer is that you lose some of the control that  you have with a conventional printer – inevitably there is not the same level of personal communication and attention when everything is done virtually. However, the plus side of digital printing is that it is possible to produce a single, printed and bound copy that can then be used as a proof before committing to a larger edition. In theory, the single proof test copy and the edition should be the same though Mixam warn that they cannot guarantee colour matching between separate orders, due to different press technologies.

Elaine and I looked at costings on the Mixam website for an A5 48 page book and we were astonished to see that a paperback was twice as expensive as a hardback book. We had already decided that the book should be the more modest paperback but given the difference in prices, we decided, as an experiment, to print both a hardback and a paperback. In digital online printing there is less control over the end product so, while designing, I was trying to anticipate what might be a problem (for example, tight binding, text getting lost in the gutters, movement when the book is trimmed, covers bound off-centre, etc) and trying to ensure that the artwork was resilient to these potential pitfalls before sending it to print.

Turnaround on Mixam is very speedy and the paperback and hardback were delivered in just under a week. I was very pleasantly surprised with the print quality and with the colour balance – no nasty shocks! I was really glad that we had printed both hardback and paperback as it became clear that, despite the cheaper price, the hardback was superior to the paperback as it opened more easily, the binding felt more sturdy and secure, and somehow, felt nicer to hold in the hand. For the text paper we selected, from Mixam’s paper swatches, an uncoated 150gsm for the hardback and for the paperback an uncoated 170gsm – with the luxury of seeing both papers bound in a book it was clear that the lighter paper was the better choice. Elaine and I agreed that we should proceed with the hardback and both felt that it somehow gave the publication an unexpected feel, almost like a children’s book of fairy tales, which, somehow, felt appropriate for this project.

After making a few colour adjustments, some minor layout adjustments and a rework of the cover to accommodate some quirks of the Mixam binding process, the book was ready to go to print. It has been great to work on the book with Elaine, exchanging ideas and finding out more about her practice. It has also been a journey of discovery working with Mixam and learning the parameters and pitfalls of working with an online printer. My practice as a designer has often been defined by the need to work within parameters, usually because of limited budgets, but, by thinking creatively and understanding and working with the limitations of particular printing methods, parameters need not be restrictive.

The book is available to purchase from the artist’s website: www.elainewoomacgregor.com

Sons of Great Men Cover

The writer Adrian Ross approached me to design a cover for his novel, Sons of Great Men. As a designer of books for the art world, I was a little apprehensive to take on this job as I know that designing covers for fiction books has a very specific skill set. The design of fiction covers is often informed by marketing demands based on a need to appeal to very particular audiences and cover designers are skilled at communicating to these readers. Adrian told me that he was ‘thinking outside of the box’ and that I should treat my approach the design of the cover in the same way that I approached the design of a book for an artist. 

When working with an artist, I usually work from the inside out and the cover is usually the last element to be designed. I am committed to the idea that the cover should reflect the design, layout and typography of the inside pages – the cover should offer the reader a taster of the interior structure of the book. I often use typography as a core element of the cover design, usually an ‘amplified’ version of the inside typography. Adrian suggested that he would be happy with a typographic approach to the design of his cover. 

Adrian sent me a brief synopsis of the plot and some of the major themes from the book. I used these prompts to start thinking about how I might use typography for the cover and started to generate some rough ideas. One of the themes in the book is the theatre – a character in the novel is a ‘sometime actor and pantomime dame’ – this made me think of the blocky typography of playbills. Another theme is journalism and the male-dominated newsrooms of Fleet Street newspapers in the 1960s – this led me to think about inkiness, and the bold uppercase typography of the tabloids. 

After several iterations which became progressively more and more layered and dense, I developed some more polished versions with variations in typography and colour that I presented to Adrian. Happily Adrian was very pleased with the approach that I had taken and, although he didn’t select my preferred version, he chose an option which was closest to my original idea. Adrian suggested that the design might be strengthened with the inclusion of some imagery; he sent me some photos (taken by himself) that he thought might work. I used an image of a typewriter on the front cover which fitted perfectly with the inky layers that I had developed and which amplified the themes of sixties journalism and writing. 

Further iterations added colour to the design: a hot pink that punctured the heavy black and blue of the front cover. The pink bleeds over the spine and on to the back cover which echoes the layered typography of the front and includes a box for the ‘blurb’. I layered this rectangular box to add visual interest and to connect it to the layering of the background – by happenstance this suggested piles of typewritten pages or letters, another theme in the book. Adrian suggested that a staple in the top left-hand corner would push this idea further. 

The pages of the book itself were typeset by Laura Kincaid, www.tenthousand.co.uk – Laura used the tyepfaces that I had used for the cover design for the half-title page, title page and for the chapter openings which gives a sense of cohesion to the book. 

I finally got to see a copy of the finished book last weekend. As a designer who is skilled at print management, I usually see a book through print production so it feels odd to have not been involved with this process (but also liberating!). Also, as a designer who usually works very closely on the complete design and layout of a publication from cover to text pages it is strange not to be familar with the content of Adrian’s book having only read the cover blurb – I am very much looking forward to reading it! 

Adrian Ross: James designed the cover for my debut novel, Sons of Great Men. He also designed the logo for my imprint, atwr books. It was a real pleasure working with him. He’s highly creative, with a can-do attitude – which is a super combination. This was the first novel he worked on, having previously established a sound reputation for designing art-related covers. He took up the challenge without hesitation, keen to push his own boundaries, and did a fantastic job.

With the book cover and the logo, James provided a theme with variations, which I appreciated, but in each case I went for the first design! I think that shows his artistic instincts are very strong. At the same time, he’s not precious about the work. Once he’d set up the typographical cover design, which achieved a beautiful layered effect, we agreed to add a photograph of a typewriter on the front. On the back, he set the blurb on ‘pieces of paper’, another effect that relates nicely to the novel’s plot. The finished product is something I’m proud to promote. Throughout our collaboration James was friendly, knowledgeable and efficient. I’d thoroughly recommend working with him.

The book will be published in 2026 by atwr books.