CREATIVE COLLABORATION
Bringing publications to life
Alliance is the leading publisher in social investment and philanthropy sectors. Since 1996, they have united an otherwise disparate field of academics and practitioners giving their work and ideas a new platform and building an engaged and dedicated readership. They approached us looking for a partner to elevate the appearance and design of their output and work alongside their editorial team.
THE BRIEF
Capture the essence of Canadian philanthropy
Alliance’s initial brief for us was to design a book of 12 essays about Community Philanthropy in Canada. Each author presents different experiences, perspectives, challenges and solutions learned from the field.
The job: transform the 500,000 word document into a book and cover design that reflected and enhanced the content that people would want to pick up and read.
THE APPROACH
Hand-drawn illustration
Without photography or brand guidelines, we needed a visual hook to make the content engaging and navigable. We used illustration to re-enforce the authors’ key messages.
The maple tree, is not only a primary symbol of Canada but it is literally rooted in its communities. We decided to explore this idea, capturing the richness and detail of all the parts of the tree, to create a set of rich and beautiful illustrations to accompany our typographic approach.
TYPOGRAPHY
Getting the type right
‘Good’ typography, is more than just good typesetting. Done well it creates a sympathetic voice and visual tone to articulate content. Whilst such things are never an exact science, years of experience bear fruit plain to see in the exploration and execution of the final piece.
We worked closely with the editor to establish a clear and consistent hierarchy throughout the 12 chapters.
FULL CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
The clients are all very happy with the final book and wish to pass on their thanks to everyone involved.
As we’ve reached the end of our first project together, I also wanted to take this opportunity to reiterate what an excellent job I think Together Creative has done. From first contact to completion you have been incredibly easy and pleasant to work with and the work has been of a very high standard. I’m not sure we could have picked a more complicated first project in terms of the number of authors and moving parts involved but you have been incredibly responsive and flexible throughout and always maintained a sharp focus on the needs of the end client.
I feel you’ve gone above and beyond at times and it is both noticed and appreciated.
David Drewery
Executive Director