How Matúš Hnát Crafted Book Design for Lucky Star 3rd Ed.

Matúš Hnát crafts the third-edition book design for Elena Lacková’s memoir, pairing neon Pantone green type with Robert Gabris artworks.

Historical memoirs usually get trapped in polite sepia nostalgia. Bratislava designer Matúš Hnát skips that cliché completely for Slovak publisher BRAK’s 2025 third edition of Narodila som sa pod šťastnou hviezdou (I Was Born Under a Lucky Star). Originally recorded with scholar Milena Hübschmannová and translated into Slovak by Júlia Vráblová, the volume preserves the landmark oral autobiography of pioneering Roma writer Elena Lacková (1921–2003). On smooth white hardcover boards, tall condensed Greed display type in electric Pantone green cuts straight across pressed crimson poppy petals, etched insects, and an engraved human eye by artist Robert Gabris. The cover doesn’t whisper. Where neon ink overprints dark botanical pigment, the green shifts tone slightly without losing edge sharpness.

Tactile Pacing and Contemporary Book Design

Cracking the boards open changes the temperature right away. Warm ochre kraft endpapers carry Gabris’s full-bleed red poppy stems in front and cross-hatched surrealist limbs across the back gutter, anchored by a green-and-white headband and a pastel pink woven ribbon marker. One leaf further in, a full-bleed 1984 black-and-white photograph shows Hübschmannová recording Lacková alongside crisp white grotesque type setting the Romani title, Uľiľom tel bachtaľi čercheň. It’s a sharp, cinematic transition. Once the narrative starts, this book design settles into an unhurried reading rhythm built in InDesign, where classical Suisse Works serif copy breathes inside generous uncoated margins beside bold sans-serif subheads, outer folios, and grayscale illustration plates.

Then the closing section flips the palette upside down. Flood-black back matter knocks out the multi-part table of contents, Romani glossary index, and Alexander Mušinka’s afterword listing in crisp white sans-serif columns. There’s zero ornamental filler on the exterior back board either. Left-aligned Pantone green blurb copy locks cleanly above the condensed green BRAK publisher mark and a matching ISBN barcode — turning an essential twentieth-century literary memoir into fearless Central European book design.

See the full project by Matúš Hnát on Behance.