BRIEFCASE, John Adams

This slim book of poetry by Auckland judge and poet John Adams marries text and design to create a pleasing whole.

The central conceit of the book is that the reader has stumbled upon the briefcase of the judge presiding over a domestic violence case. The text of the novella-length volume comprises both poetry and miscellanea related to the case: police reports, court transcripts, wills, affidavits, and even two letter-based Sudoku puzzles. The whole is bound in softcover, and designed to evoke the briefcase through which the supposed reader supposedly snoops.

The front cover

Briefcase’s cover has been designed to resemble the object of its title – a briefcase. The leather look of the cover is printed on to soft card with a slight gloss that reinforces the highlights of the leather texture image. The title, box, author name, and note along the bottom are picked out in gold foil – an unusual feature for a book, where foil is mainly used solely for the author name or title, and then predominantly within the Romance and SF genres, but which here serves to reinforce the visual conceit. 

Here on the front cover, the only clue as to the nature of the book is a single word in small type at the bottom: ‘CONFIDENTIAL: CONTAINS LEGAL DOCUMENTS AND POEMS’ (emphasis mine). Notably for a book of New Zealand poetry, the front cover does not feature an endorsement. The book relies on the mystery of what the book actually is to draw the browser in, rather than a quote of recommendation.

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The back cover

The back cover, however, dispenses with (or resolves) the mystery. The background faux-texture and the use of foil are carried around from the front, but the layout here does not follow the briefcase aesthetic. The large foil image, to which the eye is immediately drawn, is distinctly quirky; the blurb, also foil, outlines the plot of the book. 

Overall, the exterior design and production quality have an incongruous effect on one another. The briefcase design evokes quality: leather, gold, a well-paying white-collar job. This is undercut by the softcover format that, while not of lower quality than usual books of this type, is less weighty and evocative of wealth than the design suggests.

An example of show-through: the Sudoku puzzle on the next
page is visible through the paper.

The cover stock is thin card; the interior stock is a lightweight cream paper with considerable show-through. I originally felt that the book’s design was undermined by the quality of its paper: a briefcase suggests wealth, while the softcover perfect binding and see-through pages seem cheap. I have since revised my opinion, or at least come up with an alternative reading. The thin paper stock may seem at odds with the luxury suggested by the cover design, but it could be seen to reflect the text’s contents. The text is made up of poems, Sudoku puzzles, and official reports – the notepaper feel of the paper stock reflects the piecemeal and often transitory nature of these sorts of texts.

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All the elements of Briefcase’s text (excluding preliminaries) have been specifically laid out to look like collected notes, or to resemble similar real-world texts.

Note the 'staple' mark on the inside upper corner of the pages

Briefcase has no running headers, footers, or page numbers. Its pages are, however, connected by a grey-line glyph at the inner top corner of each: a ‘staple’ mark. The absence of traditional page markers, and repeated use of the ‘staple here’ image, is a simple but effective contribution to the conceit of the text as a lawyer’s notes and miscellanea.

An example of the different ways in which poems are set out

The poems are laid out in a variety of ways, set in different sections of pages but connected by a consistent use of typeface and treatment of headings. The differing layout styles create interest and keep the overall feel of the text choppy and disparate, while the connecting elements keep them from appearing entirely disconnected.

The Sudoku puzzles

The Sudoku puzzles are presented as they might be in a normal puzzle book, and on their own page, rather than being integrated into the text. This treatment of the puzzles as a distinct element contributes to the overall feel of the text as a collection of odds and ends related to the case.

An example of one of the 'legal documents' of the case

The official reports etc. are presented as they might be in actual legal and police documents.

Overall, and despite the softcover binding and lightweight paper stock, Briefcase’s exterior and interior design is successful. Within the limitations of a perfect-bound paperback, the design cleverly employs deliberate use of colour, images, foil, and typesetting to allude to the book as an object not a book. The pun doesn’t hurt, either.

Samples collected 14 June 2012