NOW NOW:
The 2023 Doek Anthology
NOW NOW:
The 2023 Doek Anthology
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The 2023 Doek Anthology
Designing a literary artefact that feels lived, layered, and local.
Book Design | Illustration | Hand-lettering | Commercial Print Production
When Doek! announced that the first festival anthology would be published a year after the inaugural 2022
Doek Literary Festival, we saw an opportunity. Not just to design a book — but to extend a moment into a material memory.
NOW NOW: The 2023 Doek Anthology brings together writers from Namibia, Eswatini, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The stories are distinct in voice and geography, yet connected by something familiar — the rhythm of southern Africa, the everyday poetry of place, and the complexity of inherited histories.
Our role was to translate that into form.
Rooted in Rehoboth
The visual journey began with a trip to Rehoboth, the setting of the anthology’s opening short story. We wanted the design language to draw from places that are often overlooked — to reflect Namibia not as a postcard, but as lived terrain.
There, we encountered Oom Punch, a self-taught signwriter who learnt his craft from his late father. His hand-painted letterforms, confident and imperfect, reminded us that typography carries memory. That influence shaped the expressive, hand-drawn typographic direction of the anthology. The letters feel human. Because they are.
Making with What Is Available
The illustrations were developed in a multimedia, linocut-inspired style — tactile, layered, and deliberately imperfect. Across Namibia, creative work often emerges from scarcity rather than surplus. Tools are repurposed. Materials are improvised. Expression is resourceful. We leaned into that.
Illustrators and designers collaborated closely, creating mixed-media compositions by hand before digitising and refining them. Each story informed its own visual response, allowing the anthology to hold variation without losing cohesion. The textures are intentional. The edges are meant to feel touched. The pages feel lived, like the stories themselves.
From Festival to Artefact
The Doek Literary Festival identity laid the foundation. The anthology builds on it — evolving the typographic language, expanding the illustration system, and translating event energy into editorial rhythm. The book is not a catalogue of texts. It is a continuation of the festival’s spirit — gathering voices, holding contradictions, and celebrating African authorship with clarity and confidence.
A year after the festival, the anthology ensures that the conversations did not end when the stage lights dimmed.
They now live on paper.
Why This Matters
In a literary ecosystem where African stories are often filtered through external aesthetics, NOW NOW asserts a visual language that is locally grounded and unapologetically expressive. It is a publication that feels like Namibia — textured, layered, resilient, and generous. And for us at Turipamwe, it represents what we care about most:
Design as a vehicle for cultural continuity.
Design that honours everyday creativity.
Design that makes space for voices to endure.
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