T 613.482.1159
Book Design & Layout | English • French • Farsi Editions | International Distribution
This early project still makes us grin – it’s the perfect mix of big creative trust, a crazy challenge, and one very understanding embassy. Jeff was given full creative freedom on covers and interiors for three technical guides celebrating Canadian canola. Working directly with the program manager at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, we designed clean, modern layouts that looked sharp in any language.
Then came the Farsi edition…
The client didn’t want to spend $1,200 on a proper Persian typeface (fair enough). Solution? We emailed the text to the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa. They kindly printed it with authentic fonts, couriered the pages back, and we scanned everything in. Only one small detail nobody mentioned: Farsi reads right-to-left and bottom-to-top. Our first layout was beautifully… backwards.
Cue good-natured laughter all around, a quick redo (matching every glyph by eye since none of us read Persian), and a perfect book the second or maybe third time around.
Three matching editions shipped worldwide, budget intact, and a great story for life.
Proof that a little ingenuity (and a sense of humour) goes a long way.
Fast-forward to 2025: we own every font under the sun, layouts flow automatically in any direction, and your multilingual project will be painless and gorgeous.
Got a book, report, or guide that needs to shine across languages and borders? Let’s make it happen – the easy way this time. Drop us a line!
In 2001, the Directorate of Honours and Recognition commissioned Jeff Poissant of Evolving Media & Design to create a wrap-around book cover for a historical book titled “Canadian Military History Since the 17th Century” edited by Yves Tremblay.
In 2003, acclaimed Ottawa author Rob Krten, known for his QNX Cookbook series, enlisted Jeff Poissant of Evolving Media & Design Inc. to craft a striking wrap-around book cover and CD-ROM label for his book, The QNX Cookbook: Recipes for Programmers.
Evolving Media was commissioned by Health Canada to design a new wrap-a-round book cover for the Laboratory Biosafety Guidelines, 3rd Edition, in English and French. Later, Health Canada ordered a third book cover in Russian for various Laboratories around the globe.