Best of Behance: Print

In case you weren’t aware, print is alive and well. For many designers working today, print makes up a very small portion of their output, if any at all. Beyond the more corporate applications of print, like quarterly reports, white papers, and advertising, few of us have the opportunity to get truly creative with the layouts we design. However, thanks to the spread of knowledge online and the ability to work with print houses across borders and overseas, there’s a thriving community of independent publishers and designers self-publishing works on the regular.

While print design may not be something you have the opportunity to engage in at work, it’s certainly something you can explore in your free time. With that said, I’d like to take a look at some of the eye-catching works I’ve come across on Behance to hopefully get your creative juices flowing.

Source: Lucas Machado

Source: Lucas Machado

Source: Lucas Machado

This first piece comes to us by way of Brazil. This design for the 45th Brazilian Club Yearbook from Lucas Machado pulls its inspiration from the Hubble telescope, which makes its use of texture and binding technique all the more interesting. While the cover’s clean, minimal typography and line-based diagrams read as very space-age, the natural-colored craft paper serving as its backdrop provides an interesting point of contrast. This duality is further explored via the book’s two separate volumes, one of which features a more traditional hardcover treatment, the likes of which you would expect for a yearbook, while the other sports an exposed spine, giving the larger of the two volumes a markedly more handmade look. The red thread used in the latter provides a point of visual interest against the volume’s black and white pages, while also connecting it thematically to the red cover of its hardcover counterpart.

Source: Gijs Lammers

Source: Gijs Lammers

Source: Gijs Lammers

This next piece, Picnics in Paradise, written by Jaryd Adair and designed by Gijs Lammers, charts a three-year cycling trip spanning two continents and fifteen countries. The book collects Adair’s photographs and writings from his trip and serves as equal parts documentation and reflection. To capture the sense of adventure and exploration, Lammers decided on a non-linear structure for the book’s sections, befitting of a trip that began with intentions of only lasting a few months. This sense of curiosity and discovery is also mirrored in the page’s highly varied layouts and multi-colored sheets that mark the book’s narrative sections, the combination of which makes for a pleasant surprise with each new page.

Source: Kelly Liu

Source: Kelly Liu

Source: Kelly Liu

This final piece, titled The Unseen Presence (of Death.), is a collaborative work between photographer Chang-Wei Lin and designer Kelly Liu, with support from writers Oril Huang and De Ed Lien. This two-volume box set features a striking arrangement of colors, materials, and printing techniques, united for the purpose of inviting audiences to contemplate life and death. The smaller green book has an interesting texture that looks a bit like grass from a distance, and features an organic script typeface with the type arranged in a way that radiates organically outward, reminiscent of a leaf or vine. The other book makes use of an otherworldly palette of silvers and greys against black pages, with a low contrast grey print against an eggshell white insert to complete the ghostly vibe.