Aleksandra & Daniel Mizielińscy

Poland

Founders of Hipopotam Studio, Aleksandra and Daniel Mizielińscy are multiple award-winning graphic designers, authors, and creators of games, websites, applications and fonts. In 2010, they won the prestigious Bologna Ragazzi Award for their book, 'Co z ciebie wyrośnie?' (What will become of you?).

This post features work-in-progress and final spreads from Aleksandra’s and Daniel’s hugely successful ‘Mapy’ (Maps), which was first published by Polish publisher, Dwie Siostry, and has since been published in more than thirty countries.

Visit the Hipopotam Studio website

Daniel: ‘Maps’ is an atlas of fifty-two maps, which are full of details and curiosities. The maps show not only borders, cities, rivers and peaks, but also the places of historical and cultural interest, eminent personalities, characteristic animals and plants, ways of spending free time, and many more fascinating features.

It took us three years to create Maps. Forty percent of this was research and fact checking – and fact checking again – and verifying every drawing with our editor and with dozens of editors of foreign editions.

First, we started with a print of a map – then we drew the first layer. Everything was drawn at exactly the same scale as it’s printed in the book.

Each small drawing was drawn separately and everything was combined in Photoshop.

We use a lot of hand lettering, and preparing all those foreign editions took us a long time. Because we're control freaks, we were not satisfied when we asked someone else to draw the letters for us, so we designed two typefaces just for this book: Mrs White and Cartographer. It was very hard. To keep the organic feeling, you have to create a lot of alternate glyphs.

Each spread is filled with more than a hundred images (there’s over four thousand illustrations in the book). Every image is described, so you can see that in Roswell, there was this famous UFO crash – and in Poland, there are golumpkis, which is a very good food that is made from a cabbage and eaten with rice... and so on.

When we make our books, the pattern is always the same. We take a subject that's interesting to us and is something that's worth spreading. We pull it apart, choosing only the essence and the interesting bits – then we add some funny stories, because I truly believe that humour is the best medium for knowledge.

I really don't have to hide the fact that a book or an app or a website is about education – because the world is interesting enough for children, and we just have to know how to show all the interesting stuff that surrounds us.

Some people think that buying ugly books is a necessary evil that goes with having a child. And I think they're wrong. You can have a product that is enjoyable for children and interesting for parents. You go to any Pixar movie and you will have this feeling.

Recently, I was searching for a quote for a presentation – and I found this one that I think sums up our way of thinking about books for children. It's from George Bernard Shaw: “Make it a rule never to give a child a book that you would not read yourself.”

23 October 2014

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Aleksandra & Daniel Mizielińscy

Poland

Mapy / Maps

Aleksandra & Daniel Mizielińscy

Wydawnictwo Dwie Siostry, Poland, 2012