Oxbridge Books '23 - Caedon Spilman

Every year since 2017, the senior class of the Azusa Pacific University Honors College publishes a handful of books together.

They collaborate in writing groups sized anywhere from five students to twelve under the guidance of a faculty professor/editor. Each publication focuses on one text or author, and each chapter written by one student.

I led a team for the layout and cover design of the 2023 Oxbridge books. I made it my goal to ensure the books all remained as consistent as possible, with the support of our art director and design mentor, Terry Dobson. We wanted this year’s publications to feel like its own unique collection without standing out from all the previous years’ titles.

Development

Letters from Jack focuses on C. S. Lewis’s long-overlooked and most expansive text: his collected letters. My writing team gathered, analyzed, and presented the best advice Lewis left us in these letters, including advice on writing, on relationships, on grief, and on faith. Letters from Jack includes a never-before-published Lewis letter straight from the dusty archives of APU.

We quickly decided to break from the look of the other 2023 Oxbridge books by embracing a photographic direction.

To make it even more challenging, we wanted to experiment with a new, more legible typographic system, designed by team member Monet Lyons.

Each of us worked on a separate title, and I coordinated the group to make sure everyone kept to the template. I chose to work on the book I was also contributing a chapter to: Letters from Jack.

The winning shot was a close-up of spilled ink, old UK stamps, and now-ruined envelopes.

(The process ended up ruining part of my desk, too.)

The stamp theme continued inside. Some stamps I collected, others I designed myself, like the one of Lewis. To represent how the chapters build on one another—rather than independent pieces—each chapter adds its own stamp to the growing pile. The amount of stamps corresponds to the chapter number.

Of course, the book wouldn’t be complete without some similarly thematic author portraits.

Results

Letters from Jack was published in the summer of 2023 and was one of the first of the 2023 titles to sell out on the APU bookstore.

Authors from Letters from Jack have also presented their work at the 2023 Christianity and Literature Conference and at the 2023 Pacific Inklings Festival.