Bazarov Editora

In late 2019 the studio started working for a newly created publishing company by the name of Bazarov (the name of a character – Yevgény Vasílevich Bazárov – in the nineteenth century novel ‘Fathers and Sons’ by Ivan Turgenev). The brief was to design a graphic identity for the publisher, but most importantly to design a system for the books, both covers and interior pages. The company’s plan was ambitious – to produce 12 books per year divided into two series – one fiction and one non-fiction. Similar to a previous publishing client of the studio, Ahab Editores, Bazarov is devoted to publishing foreign language books never before translated into Portuguese.

The owner and founder of Bazarov, Ricardo Costa, a lover of literature, was keen to pursue a type-only system for the covers. We put forward a very simple graphic system of black covers for fiction series and white covers for the non-fiction. After various typeface searches and typographic explorations we chose the lovely typeface Lector from type foundry Forgotten Shapes for the covers. For the interior pages we settled on Andulka from the Storm Type Foundry.

Design is never simply about ink on paper – about graphic marks (what is printed). It must also be about what the ink is printed onto, so the materiality of the covers was always a central component of the design. For the first series of 12 books we have used an embossed paper – Brossulin XT by Fedrigoni – which has a texture reminiscent of canvas covers. This is not immediately evident on seeing photos of the books but our concern was to readers and to attend to the act of holding the books in one’s hand. Collaboration is important in any design project and the pagination of the books, which vary in the nature of their prose, is worked in close collaboration with the Bazarov’s experienced editor Guilherme Pires.

Other, more ambitious cover designs were developed – also type only – which I am not able to show here. It’s possible that these other design proposals can be taken up at a later date so that the cover designs change from season to season but always focusing on type as the basis of the design.

Date 2019–
Cliente Bazarov Edições
Format 14cm x 22cm