In 2020 Humza Kazmi of the Hydra Cooperative commissioned me to design the book Lorn Song of the Bachelor, a riverine adventure and dungeon crawl module inspired by the crocodile stories of Southeast Asia. I was already well-acquainted with writer Zedeck Siew’s work and consider him a good friend, and the artwork from illustrator Nadhir Nor took my breath away. I accepted.

The book went through several prototypes before we landed on a design that everyone was happy with. The first was a fairly conventional two-column layout, maximizing information density and at-the-table usability. However, this clashed significantly with Nor’s artwork, which necessitated a much airier design. and the switching to a single-column layout except in a few isolated areas. The font used for headers, Metallophile Sp8, was chosen to compliment this art, as its uneven strokes and faintly humanistic shapes recall the sort of hand-painted signs one sees with no small frequency in Malaysia. 

Paired with Metallophile is the typeface Maiola, used for all body copy. This is an eminently readable typeface with just enough calligraphic flourishes to be interesting, and I find its razor-tipped serifs give text set in it a certain sense of danger and urgency — perfect for when you’re being chased by a giant crocodile down a raging river.