Madalena Espiritu Santo, the designer of Around The World In 250 Coworking Spaces, has created a collection of experiences, ideas, and passions.
Peeking into people's workspaces gives a glance at their thoughts and ambitions. While the contents of the book will undoubtedly inspire, the cover is inspirational in and of itself. There's something about a yellow book cover with an embossed type that will bring a hint of happiness to any shelf or coffee table.
Around The World in 250 Coworking Spaces is a collection of unique stories: an invitation to "travel", at your own pace, around the world of coworking.
A coffee table book filled with 250 unique stories, interiors, and communities that populate coworking spaces globally. A book collectively written, by 252 entrepreneurs, people we've met personally over the last 5 years, who share how they started, grew, transitioned, designed their spaces and communities while talking about the impact such spaces have on the cities they are based in.
THE DESIGN STORY
written by Madalena Espiritu Santo, the designer of the project
When I started working on this project with Pauline and Dimitar I immediately got contaminated with their love for this world-wide community of coworking. As we set out to find the best ways to represent the different sites, we understood that more than a compilation of spaces, this book is a collection of experiences, ideas, passions — It is not a travel guide in the traditional sense but a guide to inspiring stories and people. This led to conceptualizing a book that is kind of a hybrid in the sense that it combines in one object, characteristics that belong to different categories of bookmaking — big and shiny coffee table books versus practical and informative travel guides.
This duality is present in different ways: on the one hand a generous size with over 350 pages, profusely illustrated with images, carefully chosen materials such Fedrigoni’s Arena, in different tones and textures for a richer tactile experience, and finishing such as embossing on the cover; on the other hand, a softcover binding, two indexes that give the reader multiple ways to navigate the book, and lots of useful, easy to find information.
There are endless possibilities when it comes to present any given content on a cover, the challenge here was to have a fairly minimal and elegant cover while still suggestive enough that would reflect the big and diverse universe of coworking.
After many studies and options, came the idea of taking the standard format of a softcover book (with flaps on the front and back folded in), but instead folding the font flap out, creating a multi-layered cover.
At first sight, the title is the most present element in a bright yellow background, but in the second layer is a list of different cities going around the book to the side and the back. To bring it all together we added a bright blue sleeve that references the traveling and gives a sense of the different themes addressed in the book — design, technology, work models, etc.
In the end, the result is, I hope, an engaging, playful object that reflects the very thing it is about — different people coming together to create and empower each other.
THE OVERALL PRODUCT EXPERIENCE
The cover has been conceived as a design object, one that will beautify any shelf. Through its reverse flap, the book can stand upright when both closed or slightly open, revealing a glimpse of the cities the reader will travel to. The sleeve at the bottom of the cover gives you a sneak peek of what’s inside, while also allowing you to mark the page where you stopped last.
In its design, we gave the book a dynamic rhythm by varying the length of stories. From short to longer ones and insights pages, you’ll be able to learn new things every day, in just a few minutes of reading.
Project Credits
Pauline Roussel
Dimitar Inchev
Clare Sinclair