My Africa

This book called 'My Africa' is published by The Mo Ibrahim Foundation in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the charity. The book is a result of a competition run by the foundation where entries were submitted from all over the African continent from professional photographers, amateurs and students.

The charity was founded in 2006 with a focus on the critical importance of leadership and governance in Africa and was founded by Dr. Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese philanthropist and businessman. As Mr Ibrahim says in the introduction "We were determined not to produce yet another impressive coffee table book, with beautiful pictures of Africa - there are already so many of these. Instead we wanted to see our continent and our future, through the eyes of our fellow citizens"

The end result is a superbly produced piece of print designed by

Maria Tsirodimitri and overseen by Pentagram in London.

The book is 275x230mm, portrait with a 27mm spine. It is casebound with a mid grey book-cloth over the cover. There is a two thirds height matt laminated 'dustjacket' around the cover.

Introduction pages....

The 192pp text of the book is printed on our Shiro Echo, White 160gsm. This paper is made from 100% recycled fibres and also has FSC Mix certification, made by Favini in Italy.

Click on images to enlarge
 

The paper is a neutral white shade which is perfect both because books really should not be bright white (high whites are great for advertising but not relaxing to look at and read) and the paper works very sympathetically with the images. 

It is not possible to truly demonstrate the quality of the images (which, don't forget, are from professionals, amateurs and students - and all Africans) but I also can't do justice to the quality of the printing, which is absolutely superb. I hope the image above and the detail image below demonstrates a little of what I mean.

Image by Marco Silva (Cabo Verde)

I would like to suggest that you follow this link where you can see all the images, which will look a lot better than what I can show here: http://mo.ibrahim.foundation/my-africa/

 

There are four sections in the book, each separated with a solid colour spread of which this is one. Superb printing of a solid made out of CMYK.

This also happen to be the middle of the sewn section, so you can see the thread running neatly down the spine...

Image showing the 27mm spine with the sections and the ribbon marker.

This book has really succeeded in being a 'coffee table book' however it's been achieved with content supplied by ordinary people, thoughtful design and exemplary print and binding - not just another glossy book about Africa, so I think Dr Ibrahim's aims has been achieved.

Design is by Maria Tsirodimitri. Pentagram in London oversaw the project (Domenic Lippa's team). The superb printing is by Leycol in London with Richard Davey handling the print.

http://mo.ibrahim.foundation/my-africa/
http://mo.ibrahim.foundation/
https://www.behance.net/mariatsirodimitri
http://www.pentagram.com/
http://www.leycol.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 06.07.2017