a family’s history
Zadie Parnass: In his own words was a family project to collect and translate many years’ worth of letters by my great-grandfather Abraham Parnass written to the editor of the Canadian Jewish Eagle newspaper. My role was to turn the assembled writings, photographs and documents into a physical book to distribute to the family.
layout
The book mostly consists of translated letters, each with a blurb of historical context and commentary from my grandmother. Ultimately, I chose to display them opposite one another, with the context pages also serving as introductions to each letter.
consistency
With letters ranging from a half-page to several pages in length, it was important to establish a consistent format to ensure ease of readability. Longer letters might be broken up across multiple pages, but always on the right-hand side, with documents and photographs occupying the left-hand pages.
limitations
As this was a small family project, printing costs had to be taken into account from the start. There was some discussion of using larger font sizes to assist with readability for elderly family member but that would have increased the page count significantly. Ultimately, a balance was struck between readability and length.