ABOUT

Concept:
"Journey beyond three seas" is an editorial book project for traveler, writer and journalist alexey makeev, documenting his overland expedition from moscow to india along the historic route of afanasy nikitin, completed entirely without air travel. The main objective was to create a visual system that becomes an integral part of the narrative rather than simply accompanying the text. through typography, composition, colour, and layout rhythm, the design connects the contemporary expedition with nikitin's 15th-century journey, translating the story's multiple layers into a cohesive visual experience. The project included the development of the book's design system, a complex information hierarchy, maps, quotations, editorial references, extensive work with documentary photography, colour correction, and retouching. the publication is structured to immerse the reader in the journey, allowing them to experience the route alongside the author.

Execution
The second main task was to create a parallel of two overlapping plots running through all the numerous layers of information — the original journey of Afanasy nikitin of the 15th century,
and the modern narrative of the author, Alexey, following
in his footsteps.
And it was important through all the variety: quotes from afanasy, photographs, geographical and historical footnotes, tracking of the route and dates of travel; maintain integrity and readability of each layer. create a book that is motley, colorful, but fits into one readable puzzle. solving these problems, i created a clear, but at the same time flexible hierarchy system, where each type of information had its own compositional and typographic parameters. also for this structure, a set of original pictograms was developed to designate the region, cities, ethnic group, religion, climate, language.

Result
It turned out to ba s really authentic and signature piece for the author, designed for the exclusive self-publishing, and a great example of complex and bold piece of book layout art. I read a mini lecture about this fascinating research-driven project on a famous book fair "Nonfiction" in Moscow