The Sales Manager for books of Studio 100 & njam!, asked me if we would be able to repeat the huge success of our book “It’s Gin ‘o Clock” with another book on gin. I firmly replied: Yes, I even have a concept for it ready in my head! It’s “Around the world in 80 gins“, a book about gin & tonics, from all over the world, with the visual look & feel of a travel journey like it was Jules Vernes’.
He immediately loved the idea and gave me carte blanche to work out the concept. Of course, a book like this is team work. With a photographer, editor-in-chief, graphic designer,.. involved. So calling it my book would be wrong, but I do consider it my baby. I was involved with putting a team together for this project and worked closely with each member of this team. Just like for our first book about gin, we decided to pair up again with Manuel Wouters, who was at that time the face of the Gin & Tonic hype, even of cocktails in general, in our country.
Let me take you behind the scenes of making this book!
I started out with creating a mood book that I could send to the team for inspiration and to let them know which style and look & feel I wanted for the book.
For the next step we got to tasting a lot of gins, with Maestro Manuel in charge!
After making the final selection of gins and their paired tonics, we could get started on writing all texts and stories. And also got going with photography for the book! Just like for the previous gin book we decided to pair up with photographer Stefanie Geerts. She did an amazing job!
Next I contacting a few book printers, to talk about prices and materials. Matt paper, Glossy paper? We ended up with a Semi-Glossy for the interior, a cover wrapped in a soft-touch material and a 60% covering dust jacket.
With most of the writing & photography completed, I created a sample kit of some of the photos, some of the texts and my mood book to brief the graphic designer, Katrien Vandevijver. After she pitched few designs, it was time to put everything together and send it to the printer for some color tests.
Four weeks later the first 12.500 copies of the book arrived! To celebrate it’s release we invited some press and bloggers, and everyone who worked on the book for a launch party in Manuel’s bar SIPS with Hannah Troonbeeckx as hostess of the party.
