15. PENTAGRAM, AUSTIN
Maps of the Imagination compares the art of writing to mapmaking, but Pentagram partner DJ Stout sees a lot of parallels for designers. He took on the book’s design to help set the stage for the relaunch of Trinity University Press. After a 10-year hiatus, the small academic publisher wanted to come back with a splash. “If you have an idea, you don’t have to have a big budget,” Stout says. “You can really raise the bar.”

Since there wasn’t an illustration budget for the title, Stout went to a favorite antique shop and found an old medical journal that inspired the cover. The publication was old enough that copyright wasn’t an issue, so Stout combined a diagram of the brain with an old map. “I liked the way the illustration of the brain looked like a continent,” Stout says. He also convinced the press to choose paper for the book that was good enough to reproduce maps throughout the text. It gives readers the chance to see the specific map types referenced by the author—who’d already collected most of the artwork during his research. Michelle Taute