— Mina Bach

I don’t think I can really put into words the excitement I felt when I first had this book on my hands! It’s Surf Mama, the memoir of fine artist Wilma Johnson and how she took up surfing at 50: funny, witty and touching. Also happens to be my first published hardback.

I remember reading the manuscript and trying out layout ideas when I first got the brief from Simon at Beautiful Books to design ‘the most beautiful book in the world’ a cross between a paperback and an art book in hardback form. Working on it Saturday and Sundays, researching and understanding surf graphics, exchanging dozens of hilarious emails with Wilma, the author, discussing the smallest detail. I remember going through foil blocking with James, the printer in Somerset, and how we both got over excited about the colours in the end bands. I have learnt that making a book is a very long process and that many many people had to work on it and love it as much as I did for it to finally make the shelves at Foyles.

The dust jacket has blue surfboards that divide the sections and make up the spine. The cover was Wilma’s painting and her own lettering so I felt the design had to match the mood:

One of my favourite bits is the end paper: Wilma uses flowers in her work all the time so a flower pattern made out of surfboards seemed fitting:

Cover and interior design by Mina Bach! That’s me! Also Wilma was a sweetheart and included me in the Thank you page, I couldn’t believe it when she sent the copy, my mum is very proud:

To make the artwork and text link to each other and float nicely every chapter (all 54 of them!) has a B&W icon hand drawn by Wilma that relates to the story. I also thought to make every page a bit more playful and because the story has it’s ups and downs the page numbers have a wave that goes up and down when you flip them like a flip-book:

I had mentioned the part separators a while back, well, here they are with some minor changes:

Spread with one of my favourite paintings:

I love a hula girl:

More endpaper and back flap featuring Wilma’s portrait in glorious colour:

Detail of the back cover with some of the chapter icons and layout inspired by 60s surf magazines:

This book will always mean so much to me and it helps that it is a very good story too, can’t recommend it enough. I read the 352 pages in two days and I’m not the fastest reader.

Available from Foyles, Amazon or any good book seller!