David Gaffney's Storey Shorts

Short story writer David Gaffney was commission by Litfest to write stories inspired by the Storey Institute building in Lancaster, which has recently been reopened (confusingly just as The Storey) as a centre for the creative industries. Both Litfest and the Storey Gallery will be housed there.

With mere hours (okay, a few days) to go before the launch date, Andy of Litfest asked me to whip up a design for the digital collection of stories, Buildings Crying Out. The resulting cover is below.

The ribbon is a reference to a proposed art project that would have swathed the building in green ribbons. Alas, funding would not allow, but I felt the idea should live some how, even if only on a digital cover.

We decided to experiment with ecofont, a new font designed to use 20% less ink. This may seem like an odd decision, given this is a digital publication, but I will justify it. Firstly, the font has to be able to work in a variety of forms if it is going to have a long and prosperous life. Secondly, the book was designed, unlike previous Flax publications (see below) to be printed as well as read online, so if we are not saving our own ink, perhaps we are saving yours.

Here is a sample page, which doesn't actually show that much, I guess.

To read the book (for free of course) and see how ecofont works, go take a look at the Buildings Crying Out page on the Litfest website.