Where work ends and life begins. Or doesn’t.

Overview
We designed the cover and set the text for Kenta Nakamura’s Working as if Living (生きるように働く), published by Mishima-sha.

Question
How do you design the cover of a book that won’t give you the answer?

Challenge
The book doesn’t tell you how to live or how to work. It wanders the space between the two. The cover had to do the same, without boiling it down to a slogan.

Approach
LIFE and WORK share the cover, their letters blending until it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

The green came early, before we found out that the chapter titles drew on the language of trees and forests. It fit better than we could have planned.

Outcome
Two words that usually compete, sharing one shape. Which is more or less the point of the book.