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Inez de Beaufort is a distinguished professor of Medical Ethics in the Netherlands. To commemorate her illustrious career, she decided to publish a ‘digital scrapbook’ in 2020 and hired me for the project. Over the course of two months, we compiled her writings, articles, photographs and more into a quirky and visually engaging 224 page book. She shared this book digitally on the day of her retirement and printed a hard copy for her personal use.
The aesthetic was developed out of a variety of scanned materials; coloured and textured papers, post it notes, record cards and washi tape. I also illustrated a cartoon of Inez for each chapter.
The final digital file was produced as an interactive PDF with a fully functional Table of Contents and links to digital files on a shared Google Drive folder. I also provided a landing page on my website for people to access the content.
A review from the client
Inez de Beaufort
Can you please design my scrapbook?
Okay. What are you thinking of?
Well… a scrapbook you know.
On a rainy lockdown-day I realized that my official academic farewell happening and the pomp and circumstance that go with that, would be cancelled. Just to stop after 35 years, however, seemed too dull (and dangerous from a psychological perspective), so I thought I would make a scrapbook about those years. I asked Natasha to design it. Her first scrapbook, my first scrapbook (well, not counting the ones we made in kindergarten). We had no idea what it should look like, I gave totally false information on the number of pages, the time pressure was huge but it has been a wonderful and adventurous journey. The result is as some readers have said stunning, amazing, original, wonderful, a delight, so carefully thought through, great cartoons.
Natasha is an artist and a craftswoman. She works very hard and fast, also under pressure. She has a lot of ideas and is open to discussing and adapting them. She is in complete control when it comes to planning, so we were ready on time. Almost relaxed. (Well almost…) As my texts were mostly in Dutch I’m amazed of how she managed to know what mattered. I don’t think I will ever make another scrapbook, but if I would, she would do the design. And for any other future projects I will first find out whether she is available. The most important thing is that she grasped my vague idea and turned it in to a real work of art.
