BOOK DESIGN

Grief is not an easy subject to illustrate. Louise’s poems circle around loss with a quiet precision — gently, sometimes almost wryly. There are no dramatic outbursts, but repetitions and subdued observations; pauses and movements that return.

While working on the book’s visual expression, the image of waves kept resurfacing. Not as something dramatic, but as a rocking motion — grief’s oscillation between resistance and acceptance. I spent a long time exploring purely typographic solutions and weighty materials — black velvet, felt, dark surfaces — but the result became too closed, almost morbid.

It was only when the red colour came into play that balance emerged. Here, red does not function as an alarm or intensity, but as something living and human. A warmth in the midst of stillness. Together with the soft forms, and by allowing the typography to yield around the waves, it becomes part of the movement. The design is deliberately kept simple and material-led, so the expression remains sensory and soft — like the poems themselves.