Identity system · self-initiated
An independent press publishing fiction in translation. The covers cannot illustrate the books, because a translated novel is sold on the strength of the imprint before anyone has heard of the author. So the cover carries a mark instead of a picture, and every mark is cut from the same three shapes.
Three shapes, two inks, and no drawing. Lustig built his covers for New Directions from cut paper and let the overlaps make the third colour, which is the whole trick reproduced here.
The closed set. Seven shapes, chosen three at a time.
Two warm inks and a cool one, on an oatmeal stock. The overlaps below are not colours anybody picked. They are what the press gives you when two transparent inks sit on top of each other.
#1F6F63The cool ink. Carries the largest shape more often than not.#AF4D29The warm ink, and the only colour allowed in running text.#DFA53AThe light ink. Always the shape underneath, never on top.#F7F1E3Uncoated 300 gsm for covers. Never white.#241F1AAll type. A brown-black, so it sits with the stock.Three legal pairs, three free colours.
A text serif for anything a reader reads at length, and a geometric sans in small caps for everything the trade needs: series numbers, translator credits, prices, spine data.
The same division on every book. Mark above, rule, then the words. The proportion never changes, which is what lets the marks be as different as they like.
Cover, 129 × 198 mm
Three books from the international list. One architecture, three marks, and the overlaps doing the work that a photograph would have to do otherwise.
Margin International · 11
Ana Ferrer
Translated from the Spanish by H. Oyelaran
Margin International · 12
Jonas Holm
Translated from the Danish by R. Vestergaard
Margin International · 13
Yuki Sato
Translated from the Japanese by E. Marsh
Numbers eleven to thirteen, spring list
On a shelf the marks become a pattern, which is the point of a series. In a catalogue they shrink to a thumbnail and still tell you which book is which.
Spines, the series as a shelf
Margin International · 12
Jonas Holm
First published in Danish 2019
This translation 2027
Set in Newsreader and Jost
Printed on uncoated 300 gsm
Title spread
New this spring
Yuki Sato's third novel, and the first to appear in English. Thirteen days in a house where nobody agrees about what the weather is doing.
Read an extractWebsite, the mark carried straight through
Margin · Spring 2027
Five books this season, four of them first translations. The list is short on purpose: we publish what we can sell by hand.
Format 129 × 198 mm, paperback with flaps
Rights All languages except Spanish and Danish
Orders trade@marginpress.example · +44 20 7946 0000
Catalogue, A5
Every one of these will be requested by somebody who means well, usually a fortnight before the catalogue goes to print.