10%

Dear Atlas, the book

Our new official bedtime story.

By Life & Muse

February 8^th, 2020

The best kind of project is a secret project. And back in October, I started working on a truly special one.

Shortly before that, I penned a little letter to Atlas, our incoming daughter, as a means of sharing the news with our closest friends and family members. What started as an innocent announcement post eventually began to take on new meaning as Hanna and I found an opportunity to articulate our hopes and wishes for our future daughter.

"Regardless of what lessons you take or discard from us though, our simple hope is that you discover a world of things that are worth chasing. And then chase them. And if you can manage to do that with conviction, care, and optimism, even better."

– Dear Atlas (September 7th, 2019)

Meanwhile, I started thinking about push present ideas for Hanna that could also commemorate Atlas’ eventual birth, and it occurred to me that I could leverage the Dear Atlas letter. My initial thought was to design a poster of it (love me a good framing project), and it wasn’t until Hanna half jokingly mentioned her wish to read Dear Atlas as a bedtime story that it occurred to me that I could do so much more.

And so began a new creative adventure: I would try to turn Dear Atlas into an illustrated children’s storybook! I could hardly contain my excitement.

The illustrations

In October, I reached out to a long-time friend and extraordinary designer named Andrey. Having seen Andrey’s work from the sidelines for years, I knew he’d be the one to help bring this crazy idea to life. To my delight, he said yes pretty much immediately.

So off we went. In the evenings and other stealthy windows of free time, Andrey and I got to work. To kick things off, we broke down the letter into pages and began storyboarding.

I also sent over a few reference photos of me, Hanna, Zoey, and my grandpa (who I mention at the start of the letter) through the years to help with character design. I’ll save us all the embarrassment and just reassure you the characters are pretty spot-on.

Week by week, Andrey would email over updates on sketches, color explorations, and eventually finished pages. Sometimes I'd nitpick on little details, but most of the time I'd just send back waves of heart eye emojis. Getting updates from Andrey was one of the best parts of my week.

The finished product

Fast forward to January, after some final rounds of polish with Andrey, I shipped the artwork off to get the book printed. With some research, I had decided to print the book with Artifact Uprising, leveraging their Layflat Photo Album format. I had done a photo book and a few sets of postcard-style prints with them before, so I already felt confident about the quality of their products.

And just earlier this week, when the book finally arrived, it did not disappoint.

And because I refused to drop the poster idea, I picked one of my favorite spreads and had it framed as a 24x36 print. It's the perfect adornment to Atlas' nursery.

Dear Atlas, the book

I'm so immensely proud of how this project turned out and incredibly relieved to finally be able to share it with Hanna (after months of working on it secretly). I never thought that a little announcement post could create such special moments for our growing family and I'm so happy to now have this new keepsake as part of our history.

Countless thanks go to Andrey, without whom this project wouldn't have been possible or nearly as special. His incredible talent and generosity gave life to this project.

Above all though, this book is for Hanna. Her strength and spirit is the backbone to our family. Throwing a few words and pretty pictures on some pages is the tiniest of gestures in comparison to all that she’s done and given already.