(Uni)verse
Identity for an independent publisher of single-subject books.
Context:
Each (Uni)verse title takes one subject and stays with it for two hundred pages. The list has no visual family — a book on tide tables sits next to one on early computer music — and the task was an identity that could hold that range without imposing a house style on titles that need to look nothing like each other.
Creative idea:
The identity lives in the brackets. A fixed frame is applied consistently across the list, and everything inside it is allowed to belong to the individual book rather than to the publisher.
Design approach:
The frame is defined by position and proportion rather than by typeface, so each cover can be set in whatever face its subject demands while still reading as part of the series. Spines carry the only truly fixed element, which makes the list legible on a shelf. Catalogue and web layouts reuse the same frame, with the covers doing all of the colour work.
Outcome:
A publisher identity that stays recognisable across a deliberately inconsistent list. It gives each book its own voice while keeping the series unmistakable on a shelf and in a catalogue.
