Stranger Fruit

Monolith Editions

CREATIVE DIRECTION — CALEB CAIN MARCUS
PUBLISHER — MONOLITH EDITIONS
ARTIST — JON HENRY
WRITER — SABRINA GREIG
BOOK PHOTOS — THE BOOK PHOTOGRAPHER

Recognition 
Art Directors Club New York, Silver Cube
AIGA 50 books | 50 covers, 50 Books Winner
Red Dot Design Award, Winner
Tokyo Type Directors Club, Excellent Work 
Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, Shortlist

Stranger Fruit is a photo book
in response to the murders of 
Black Men by the police.

When embarking on this book we were given two criteria: the text should have equal importance to the photographs and the cover had to be gold and purple.

We then sought ways to include the gold as a sculptural element and a design refrence to the religious paintings the photographs evoke. Many old bibles we researched had gold gilded edges and ocasionaly contained drawings on their foredge. We created a modern interpretation of these foredge drawings that revelas the words from the 1939 Billy Holiday song Strange Fruit that inspired the title. We based the proportions on the Gutenberg Bible, the earliest mass produced book and customized the F on the cover’s typography. 

The second edition is
distinguished by a purple foredge.