101 beads was a freelance project I did in collaboration with the photographer Gaylan Nazhad.
The brief was to create a book featuring photographs from Iraqi Kurdistan that he captured over two years during the regional conflict with Islamic State, it depict the society of Kurdish conflict. Images from the frontline, refugee camps & detention centres are used to express the flux of war and its consequences for the psychlogical and physical landscape of Kurdistan and its people. The book’s photographer, himself Kurdish, attempts to disparage many assumptions of the Middle-East and violence itself.
The book has been printed commercially and is available for purchase at: www.101beads.photography
The book’s title is a metaphor that refers to the 101 Islamic prayer beads. These beads are connected to form a loop which the person continuously cycles through their hands whilst they pray. This is a strong metaphor referring to the continuous violence and war which plagues Iraqi Kurdistan.
TYPESETTING
The book features an introduction which breaks down the content of each chapter as well as summarising the purpose of the book. I manually set the type to get more of a natural rag and avoid any typographic rivers.
REFINING THE LAYOUT
Although the layout was quite minimal, I had to do a lot of minor corrections and tweaks to refine the final piece. For example, some of the images were not the same size so I adjusted the margin widths on the sides so the top and bottom of the images would line up with each other which is visible in the diagram above. You can see that the inside margin is larger on the left hand image, however, the images line up at the top and bottom which would be much more obvious if it was out of line.
As for the main body content, the layout was kept simple to keep focus upon the photography itself. All of the images have a caption, some metaphorical and some more literal, to describe the image content. Key images from each chapter cover a ¾ page spread to highlight their importance and set the tone of the chapter.