Magda Szabó is one of the best know Hungarian authors of the twentieth century. Her works often focus on intriguing female characters and their relationships with each other. Az őz (The Fawn) is no exception. It is the life story of an actress told in a series of flashbacks, focusing on her obsessive hatred of another woman, and the efforts she made to take everything away from her. It is an intricate psychological portrayal of childhood trauma and what it does to a person. The book is like it's main character: melancholic, eloquent, and violent.
Az őz is written from Eszter's point of view. She is addressing another character of the story in the second person, and talking about her target most of the time – focusing on a third person.
In Hungarian, our third person singular pronoun is “ő”. My idea was to bring out this one letter word from the title. I've spent some time sketching different letterforms, and came to a solution I liked, where the large “ő” spiralled into its connection with the “z”, than took this sketch into Illustrator to make some adjustment.
Later in the process, I decided to soften the lettering a little, and drew a digital watercolour version.
The tall shapes of Bebas Neue worked great for the author's name, but it is not meant for longer texts:
I set the rest of the copy in Portada.
I set the rest of the copy in Portada.
The binding design is printed in one colour.
Note: The logo and texts on these designs are not mine: I took them from the Európa edition of Az Őz. This is a self-initiated project I created for my own creative satisfaction. I'm not affiliated with the publisher or any other right holders in any way. I'm just a designer, who was inspired by what she had read.
