About the book
In February 2020, my boyfriend Artur and I set out on our biggest adventure yet. We flew to the other side of the planet, ready to travel around wonderful New Zealand for a month. Just us, my sketchbook and all the markers and pencils I’d need, of course – my favourite travel companions.
This is our travel story, filled with memories of all the places we saw. If you’ve already been there, I’m sure many things will sound familiar and evoke sweet memories. And if you haven’t, I hope this helps inspire your next amazing adventure!
Specifications
Pages: 72
Languages: English and Russian
Size: 21 cm x 27 cm
Languages: English and Russian
Size: 21 cm x 27 cm
Self-published in Amsterdam, 2021
The process
It started right in New Zealand, me sketching in the wild. It was so easy to fall in love with all that stunning nature! I wanted to capture every single moment in my sketchbook. It wasn't only about nature though – sketching food was one of my favorite topics, too. Ah, just thinking about those tender and juicy mussels makes me want to go back in time…
Capturing the moments
It was a lot of sketching! All the illustrations in the book are made with markers and a bunch of colorful pencils. I'm a huge fan of Copic markers – their rich, vivid colors make the drawing look like it’s printed in a journal. And they also evoke sweet memories of my childhood, when I used to have all sorts of markers and pencils around me. In New Zealand, I carried a little knitted pot of markers in my backpack, ready to jump into sketching right away.
This was my second book project, after the Sicily travel sketchbook. This time though, my sketchbook was 21x21cm – much bigger than the one I had in Sicily.
I scanned all my sketchbook pages back home and used Wacom tablet and Adobe Photoshop for the post-editing.
Planning a book
My sketchbook was filled with a great deal of sketches and travel notes from different places. To organize everything into a book, I created a storyboard. Simplified page spreads helped make a good book overview, and worked as a progress tracker at the same time: green for done, and yellow for in progress states.
Creating my own font
Creating my own font was a very special part of the book-making process. I wanted my book to look and feel just like a real travel journal written by hand, so I decided to make a font that looked as close to my handwriting as possible. By this time, I already had the personal writing style that I used in my sketchbooks for ages. What was left to be done was to convert it into a digital format. And since I wanted to have this book in two languages (English and Russian), I had to make sure it supports both Latin and Cyrillic symbols.
First, I used Wacom tablet and Adobe Illustrator to draw different characters. Then I assembled everything into a font family with a Fontself maker.
I loved working on my font, but I had to be really patient. It took me days to draw the font, and weeks to tweak the different letter combinations. I’m not sure if I can call this process finished, but it was definitely good enough.
Here’s the same paragraph in English and Russian:
Working on the page spreads
Here’s how the pages started to look like after combining pictures and words:
Drawing the book’s cover was a very important step of the process, too. I wanted it to capture the essence of our trip, which to me was a combination of that stunning New Zealand nature and the campervan life.
Book cover: from idea to final result
After all the page spreads were finished, I assembled the book with Adobe InDesign. Everything was ready for print. Exciting!
The result
It’s always so, so satisfying to look at the results of all your hard work. To me, that meant finally holding the book in my hands!
Spending the extra time to create my own handwritten font was totally worth it – it reflected my personality, and helped the stories feel more authentic. I’ll definitely use it in my upcoming projects, too.
I have to confess. This book turned out to be one of the most difficult personal projects I’ve ever worked on. But, at the same time, it was one of the most interesting ones. And gifting this book to my friends and loved ones really was a special, truly rewarding moment 💙
If you work in a publishing agency or if you know someone who might be interested publishing my book for a wider audience, don’t hesitate to get in touch. I’d love this book to help more people discover wonderful New Zealand, and maybe even spark their next amazing adventure!
