We’ve been wanting to do another re-imagined classic for quite a while. One that is as much an influential literary cornerstone and as loved as Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. And one that, like our Shandy, could become even more loved through a visually irreverent design treatment that champions the book’s heritage and celebrates its wonderfully bonkers narrative arc and general inventiveness.

Don Quixote is that classic. Wonderfully bonkers, truly innovative and still very much culturally relevant. A classic we want to champion for its progressive meta-story narrative and celebrate as a contemporary cultural object.

Widely said to have been the first European modern novel, influenced more contemporary writers than any other novel, re-imagined as a graphic novel, a brilliantly failed film, rumoured to be attempted as another film, published in numerous editions, and with its very own Spanish Institute of Culture named in honour of its author, Cervantes.

(No pressure then. But at least we wouldn’t be the first to fail.)

So we thought who better to design it with colourful playfulness than the award winning Fraser Muggeridge, who’s planning on sending recent RCA graduate Jake Robinson to La Mancha to metaphorically trace and visually interpret the journey of Don Quixote in an epic (and most likely comic) way.

Juan Blas Delgado Ramos, Head of Cultural Activities at Cervantes Institute has given us his “this is a worthy project” blessing and opened up the Institute’s Archive. And Jake is planning his journey with a mate and a camper van, on the look out for large scale La Mancha romanticism in the everyday, quite possibly with the odd non-cliched windmill thrown in.

It’s a huge book. In more ways than one. And we’re crazily excited about it. Will be sure to share Jake’s journey with you when that happens. And can’t wait to bringing the book in its epic and re-imagined guise out next Spring.

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