A collection of two travel stories from Cuba. The first book was written in 1965 by my grandfather Lubomír Novák, who was sent to this country by the Královopolská strojírna in Brno for a six-month working mission to help put a nickel production plant into operation. I was intrigued by his story, and so in 2022 I also travelled to Cuba and wrote up my findings in a second book. This work is intended to show differences of one country’s times. What has changed or not changed over the years?
The title A Post from Cuba & to Cuba is inspired by my grandfather’s letters, which he exchanged with people in the Czech Republic. “A Post from Cuba” is the title of the first book from 1965. The word post here means, in other words a postcard. “A Post to Cuba”, is the title of the second book from 2022, where I try to use a pun to express a kind of look back at this country. It means in other words a report.
The visual design of the first book is inspired by the title. In the double-page spreads in the book, I inserted one color frames inspired by the frames from the international mail envelopes. I also adopted the format of the stamps from the envelopes, which in most cases I created myself. I tried to give this book a style that would express the time period. I used scanned slides that my grandfather took on his trip and documents that he kept as mementos (airline tickets, letters, table settings, etc.).
The second book is inspired by the first one and because of that takes on similar elements. However, we live in the mobile era, so the sharp frames in the book have become rounded, they were inspired by the mobile format. Furthermore, the stamps, which are emojis in this book and the digital author’s photographs are also treated in this “mobile look”.
