Growing Up Woodbrook

Creative direction and graphic design of a book on Woodbrook

Winner: Silver ADDY for Book Design (2023)

Woodbrook – a district of the city of Port of Spain – has been my home since 2008, and it’s also where my studio is based. So, imagine how thrilled I was when I was approached by The National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago and The Woodbrook Residents’ Committee to work on the design of Growing Up Woodbrook – a story of change and transformation. In this book, the voices of Woodbrook residents past and present are woven together with archival material and anthropological insights to describe the development of this beloved space and place.

I started the design of this book with a palette taken from one of Woodbrook’s best known buildings, the former tax office building, with its two-tone green walls and deep red cast letters. Chapter openers are marked by bold headings and green-tinted images. Pull quotes were selected at the start of each chapter to tease the text to come, while titles, page numbers, and chapter names are kept to the top of the page, mimicking the act of looking up at street names to find one’s way. There’s a special warm gray background for the sections where there are excerpts from residents, as well as the section on Woodbrook’s icons. The endpapers feature a pattern I created from line drawings of finials, along with the letter W. The cover was a bit of a struggle for a while, but coming down to the very end of the project, the WRC got access to a 1960s photograph by the late Noel Norton that we knew would be perfect.

SUMMARY | Role: Creative Direction and Graphic Design
Included design direction and layout, plus publishing and printing advice for first-time publisher clients including specs and proofing.
Published: November 2022 by The National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago
Produced by: The Woodbrook Residents’ Committee
Written by: Dylan Kerrigan, with Ken Jaikaransingh
Editor: Ken Jaikaransingh
Printed in T&T by The Office Authority

Book photos: Michele Jorsling