A story of one woman’s barefoot adventure, a running challenge like no other, by Anna McNuff

Book Design | Illustration | Map Design | Cover Design

Barefoot Britain tells the story of one woman’s epic challenge to run 100 marathons around the UK, all barefoot! The latest book by the award winning author, speaker and adventure superwoman, Anna McNuff.

A few years ago we met up with Anna as she was at the tentative beginning of her training for this event, and we became one of the very lucky few to hear of her plans. "Is it mad?" she asked, with a grin starting to spread across her face - and with that we knew she'd already decided it was the perfect plan.

This challenge was always going to be tough, pushing her body beyond anything she had tried before, and all on home turf - with all eyes watching. The story is a beautifully written, painful, challenging, life-affirming read about people, perseverance, and perspective.

When Anna asked us to design the book, we jumped at the chance. The brief was wide open and different, a detachment for her existing publications, because this challenge was like no other.

We wanted to cover to grab you from the start, so bold contrasting colours were a must. It also needed a little grit and texture to reflect the harsh reality of the challenge. Making the image of Anna black and white added that stark contrast and made her stand out. We explored several ways of showcasing Britain on the cover, from hand-drawn illustrations to experimenting with photography and simple vectors, but a map of the big ol' isles seemed the best way to show the magnitude of what Anna did.

Inside we created hand-drawn maps to showcase all the sections of the run, pulling out key landmarks and memories Anna had from her fleeting time in these places. These illustrations needed to do more than familiarise people with locations, but also show the personality and lasting impressions of each place.

The final book fills us with joy, and it hopefully captures a glimmer of this amazing adventure.

Buy Anna’s book here

The Concepts

We had so much fun designing all the concepts for this book - we thought we’d give you a little peak behind the curtain too, and show you those that were close, but didn’t quite make it!