This series of book covers for the monographs of the renowned Slovenian historian Mateja Ratej represents a design dialogue between the historical harshness of the past and radical typographic expression. Right from their titles, the books Rožengrunt and Foltrefer introduce phonetically distinct regional dialect terms, which served as the primary starting point for a striking typographic concept.
The letters for the titles were sourced and transferred directly from authentic archival materials—documents, official records, and posters from the historical eras examined in each book. This direct materialization of historical sources on the cover establishes a powerful tactile sense of a bygone era. Through their color and compositional kinship, the two books function as a visually cohesive and conceptually unyielding set.
Rožengrunt (2023)
Through the lens of microhistory and cultural history, this book explores thirty shocking cases of female violence within Styrian cottager families between the two World Wars, an era when a radical outbreak of violence was often the only escape from physical and economic dependency in a patriarchal environment.
Foltrefer (2025)
This monograph offers a microscopic examination of the social fabric and survival instincts in Maribor during the turbulent 1940s, shedding light on the invisible yet densely woven resistance network of the Liberation Front amidst extreme, life-or-death circumstances.
Triumfator (2022)
A political biography dedicated to Anton Korošec, arguably the central Slovenian political figure of the first half of the 20th century. The visual solution for this book centers on a high-contrast black-and-white portrait, complemented by a dynamic yet monumental layout of the title typography.
