“Srce zemlje” (engl. The Heart of the Land) is a memorial book dedicated to the suffering of the Croatian people in Central Bosnia during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. After thirty years of concealment, the author Gloria Lujanovic boldly speaks about these tragic events and restores dignity to her deceased and surviving compatriots. As a young journalist, she researched the Bosnian war crimes and followed the prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. This book recounts her personal experiences during this process through a combination of factual, poetic, and journalistic writing styles.
We designed this book in an introvert way, making it intentionally small and modest. It is reminiscent of a Christian prayer book. The typography for poems is custom-designed, recreating the vernacular script of the ancient gravestones of Central Bosnia. The poems are the most prominent part of the book, dedicated to the unknown people of Bosnia, whose small yet heroic stories remain unknown and overlooked in the general Bosnian political narrative. The essays are set in the “Dear Sir Madame” typeface, previously designed and released by RP Type Foundry. Obscured factual footnotes about covered-up, non-processed war crimes are printed black on black. Photographic collages depict war ruins and tombstones of Catholic cemeteries in Central Bosnia.
