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Timemongers

Category

2025

Book

Awarded

Designer / Designers / Design Studio / Agency

Client

Year

Maria Surducan

—

2025

Printing House

Print Run

Number of Pages

Format (W × H)

Publisher

ISBN

—

25

38

152 × 217 mm

—

—

Other Credits

Created in the frame of the Helen M. Salzberg 2023 residency (Jaffe Center for Book Art, Florida).

Short description

Long description

The book presents a stylized fairy tale that deals with time manipulation, immortality and the unavoidable consequences of being human. The end result merges comics with pop up and foldable map elements and was created in the frame of the Helen M. Salzberg 2023 residency (Jaffe Center for Book Art, Florida).

Timemongers is a way of visualizing life through an imaginary cartography, in which the reader, turned character, tries to manipulate time in order to capture happiness.
A child is lured into the burning world with the promise of happiness, grows up and arrives at a crossroad, chooses between love, power and comfort, achieves happiness then tries and apparently manages to stop time for her and her friends. They reach paradise, but eventually the burning world catches up with them and the wheels of time start turning again. This cycle keeps repeating, the child, now a grown woman, learns that life is made of both happiness and sadness and that the ultimate solution is to learn to grow happiness in your heart, in spite of the fire and regardless of the choices made at the crossroads.
The 38 pages book brings together sequential art (both comic panels and flip-book stills), pop-up elements (Turkish maps and floating planes) and a folding map. It was printed and assembled in the artist's studio.
This book is part of a larger research into the therapeutic value of belief narratives. It started as a live-drawing concert in the context of the 2021 Comic Art Europe grant and residency, then continued with a tarot-like deck and finally, with a book-object, developed over a two years period in the frame of the Helen M. Salzberg 2023 residency (Jaffe Center for Book Art, Florida).

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Foto: Mihai Ciobanu

Jury Notes

Process Notes: Maria Surducan

Here, the production is what strikes us first — the binding, the cover, and the way the book is held. Each page brings individual surprises, and the pop-ups create a little theater, offering different levels of perspective. The illustrations are strong, and the tactile quality of the book makes it a joy to experience. It revives an old technique in a fresh way, making it both nostalgic and innovative.

 

PV: Here it’s also especially the production, the binding, the cover, how you hold it. You have super individual surprises on any page. 

 

ML: The pop-ups are like a little theater. It’s like a stage where you have different levels of perspective. Good illustration as well.

 

JG:  It’s very enjoyable. It feels like quite an old technique that’s not used anymore, so it’s nice to see a new pop-up book. It’s very tactile and nice to hold.

Thinking about the journey from initial idea to the finished piece, which moments had the deepest impact on the project and what made you realise those changes had to happen?

I knew the shape of the story from the very beginning, but I had no idea what the shape of the book would be. So I set about exploring the Turkish map fold, and my initial idea was to create a treasure box that would include three maps, six puzzle cubes and three flipbooks, all stacked on top of each other. But the whole thing wasn't really coming together. Then I received some promotional markers and a lot of things I could draw on with those markers. I was just playing around, but one image, hand drawn on a tote bag in a moment of inspiration, really stuck with me and became the idea for the cover. And then, while killing my ”two hours before the flight” after attending Bucharest Graphic Days 2023, I had a moment of clarity and sketched out the entire outline for the book, integrating all the elements I had from before. I got back home, and, over the course of Christmas and New Year, created the first prototype of the book. That, turns out, was the easy bit. I documented the rest of the process on https://timemongers.mariasurducan.com/book-prototypes/, but the core idea didn't really change much from that first prototype.

Collaboration is built on trust and dialogue — within that process, which part of the project feels most authentically yours, and which unexpected voices pushed you beyond your comfort zone?

I created the whole book by myself and then, in the summer of 2024, I sought outside feedback from an illustrator (Ileana Surducan - yes, I trust my sister with my life), a graphic designer (Alice Stoicescu) and a book editor (Eli Bădică). They all made valid observations (Why is Paradise so white and hetero-normative? Are you using a grid for text placement? Why is there a change of pace from picture-book to full on comic-book, for just one page? - just to name a few) which stalled the project for two months, but which also greatly improved it.

In what ways do you believe awards like LDA shape (or should shape) the design landscape locally? And is there a responsibility attached to being an awarded designer within that ecosystem?

To me, the most important outcome of LDA are the exhibitions, and the opportunity not only to have my work seen across the country, but also to see the works of fellow artists. I think it's important to encourage bold, unusual, unbridled book design, in a cultural landscape shaped by restrictions and harsh financiar choices. I do feel a sense of pride, but I am not sure I feel... responsability. I have been playing with illustration and paper design for a while, creating my own things while drawing inspiration from various sources, not much thinking about how the book will find its public,so it's a very nice feeling to know my work has caught the attention of the jury. Seeing the exhibition, it's also great to feel you are part of a community of creators.

When designing for a book as an object, what were the material or tactile decisions (paper stock, binding structure, format) that made the difference between something “nice” and something you believe will last?

To be honest, I did end up going to ”the type of paper I could feed into my home printer” and ”the type of binding I could do at home” and ”the type of pop-up elements I could easily reproduce on my home plotter”. Since I was working with a laser/led printer, I tried to mitigate the inevitable shine by using a slightly textured paper (Fabriano Accademia, 200g) -  and I did a lot of testing to find it. And I had to learn to live with the white line that results when you fold a laser-print and the tonner inevitably cracks. The map also posed a lot of problems - I needed a sturdy paper that wasn't too thick so that I could fold it several times without affecting the closed book, and that was also the same shade of yellow as the Accademia. It took a lot of trial and error. And I didn't manage to find a printer that could help me assemble the book so I adjusted the format to fit my home printer (max. paper width 30 cm) and the paper I could feed into said printer (max weight 250g). In the end, this meant I went from a width of 16,5 cm to one of 15 cm for the closed book. So I don't know how many of these were, truly, choices, and how many were compromises.

How did you balance the informal elements and the visual impact? Which one led the process and why?

I was an illustrator, working on what was basically a personal project, so I leaned heavily on the visual side, stopping only to check with beta readers that the story was still comprehensible. My main goal was to create the best visual representation of the story I had been working on (through live-drawn concerts and tarot decks) since 2021, and to make it as striking as the technical limitations would allow me.

Books carry production constraints (print run, budget, distribution). How did those practical limits influence the design — were there compromises that became strengths?

I don't know about ”strenghts”... but it took me six months to assemble 25 copies, while working a fulltime job. The initial goal had been 50 copies/language. So... I guess it's a super limited edition right now :).

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