New Work: ‘The Namesake’
Cover of The Namesake: A Portrait of the Film
Abbott Miller and John Kudos designed the book The Namesake: A Portrait of the Film, a tie-in to the new film adapted from the acclaimed novel by Jhumpa Lahiri and directed by Mira Nair, that opens today in limited release.
Cover of the book showing the extension of the film still to the inside flap
The Namesake: A Portrait of the Film is unique among film tie-ins for its ability to stand alone as a book unto itself, an accomplishment of the book’s design, original essays and stunning photography that includes film stills and the director’s collection of inspirational photographs from Garry Winogrand, Manual Alvarez Bravo and Mitch Epstein.
The book is the amalgamation of two disparate elements, Lahiri’s novel and the film. To reconcile these two elements, the designers decided the book should be smaller than is typical for photography-based film books, a decision that reflects the origin of the film’s story in a novel. Capturing the aura of the film in a format that was sympathetic to the medium was another challenge overcome through the printing of the photographs as either full-page bleeds, or in a wide-screen format, also referencing their origin. The photographs are paced by passages from Lahiri’s novel.
Stills from the film reproduced in a wide-angle screen format reflecting their origin
The book opens with two short essays, the first by Jhumpa Lahiri, about how she developed the story and her feelings about its adaptation, and the other, by director Mira Nair, on the photographs that inspired her direction. The first essay is printed on intense red paper and the second on brilliant yellow, thus distinguishing the essays from each other and separating them from the rest of the book. The same technique is employed for the contributors pages and pages dedicated to credits.
Spread from the book with a film still and Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s photograph that helped inspire Mira Nair, the film’s director