A limited edition hardback for the 2023 publication of Crooked in the Car Seat, a playscript that was written and staged in 1970s Ireland. The book was published by Duras Press and contains an introduction by the playwright Brian Lynch and a preface by the author Colm Tóibín. The cover was printed in single colour on Colourplan Hot Pink.
The title is a reference to a scene in the play in which a character drunkenly mishears the words of Van Morrison’s Cyprus Avenue “And I’m conquered in a car seat, And I’m staring straight at you”. The song is about attraction and unattainable love and these themes are reflected throughout the play.
The three bars that reveal the photo on the cover redact the original misheard lyrics:
Conquered
in a
Car Seat
in a
Car Seat
The title falls away from the space mimicking the process of paste-up typesetting of the time and as a reference to the playwright's newspaper background.
The typeface Castle was chosen for the title as representation of Humanist Sans Serifs of the time. The cut used was produced by URW in 1985, but is a close match for the original version produced in the 1960s. A similar typeface was used on the programme for the 1979 production (image of the original programme included here).
The typeface Castle was chosen for the title as representation of Humanist Sans Serifs of the time. The cut used was produced by URW in 1985, but is a close match for the original version produced in the 1960s. A similar typeface was used on the programme for the 1979 production (image of the original programme included here).
The interior pages were typeset by Susan Waine at Ashfield Press in Scala and Scala Sans designed by Martin Majoor. And as the original playscript was originally produced on a manual typewriter, Nexus (a monospaced typeface also designed by Majoor) became the natural choice for the rest of the title's text.
This project is featured on Fonts In Use.
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Client: Duras Press Role: Concept, Design and Production
Credits: Printing by Sprint Print, Binding by Trinity Binders, interior pages typesetting by Susan Waine at Ashfield Press. Cover Image is a detail of a photograph of the play's original cast and was supplied by Dublin City Library & Archives.
Credits: Printing by Sprint Print, Binding by Trinity Binders, interior pages typesetting by Susan Waine at Ashfield Press. Cover Image is a detail of a photograph of the play's original cast and was supplied by Dublin City Library & Archives.
