Cutting the Excess

Cutting the Excess is a book design project developed for Alpina PRO in 2023, initiated by Nikolay Pere, founder of Bonnie & Slide. Based on Nikolay’s initial cover sketch and the basic layout provided by the publisher, I developed the cover design and a broader visual concept that was then applied to several chapters. The main challenge was to build a visual system that could work both as part of the book cover and guide the reader throughout the interior pages, connecting typography, layout, and imagery into a coherent object. The project included the development of a custom format with a perforated section, which became an important part of the book’s physical concept and influenced both the cover construction and the interior design.
For the illustrated chapters, I developed a series of collage-based compositions, combining found imagery, provided principal photography, graphic elements and typography. Rather than treating the illustrations as separate decorative elements, the approach was to make them part of the book’s overall visual language. The collages vary in density and composition while maintaining a consistent graphic elements and colors across the different chapters. The production process eventually brought several technical challenges related to the perforated cover and block, as well as changes to the concept and format. The final edition was completed by Nikolay Pere and his team and published in a limited edition in late 2024. This case study presents my part of the project: the original cover concept, format development, and the visual direction and collage illustrations created for the first chapters.