Updates from Zigmunds Lapsa, our very favourite Latvian book designer

Latvia is one of the gems in the European crown when it comes to design communities, as Zigmunds Lapsa explained when he popped in last week. Though the community there is tiny (in accordance with the equally small population) small publishing houses there are often happy to let book designers have free rein, which tends to result in some really nice publications.

Taking full advantage of this unexpected quirk, Zigmunds has been busily designing for publishers back in Latvia while doing his MA at the RCA in London, and as was the case the last time we wrote about him, his work is crisp, clever and accessible. Using hand-drawn elements to pick up threads from the book he’s working on – Dylan Thomas’ polka-dot bow ties for example, in a series of books by the poet, or long, swooping white cursive handwriting to recreate the idea of flight in a novel called Angels and Eagles – he condenses whole themes and atmospheres into one concise image. The endlessly exotic Latvian lettering only adds to the draw of his publications. With any luck it won’t be long before British presses pick up on his talents too, so that we can start reading these tomes rather than just gazing adoringly at their covers.