Davor Hrstić’s poetry collection “Before, Some Time Before” explores transience, death, childhood, personal existence and the author’s native region. Free verse, a fragmented rhythm and a mixture of dialects create a sense of restlessness that became the starting point for the book’s visual concept. Its limited budget and black-and-white printing were treated not as obstacles, but as production constraints that give the final design a powerful and melancholic character.

The visual identity is based on the author’s personal archive of early 20th-century film negatives documenting real people and places from the region about which he writes. The negatives were photographed, digitally inverted, printed and physically cut with scissors. The resulting fragments were assembled into handmade collages that follow the mood and narrative of the poems. Irregular cuts and rough edges thus become a visual equivalent of the rhythm of the verse. The compositions also incorporate fragments of documents, pieces of paper and reproductions of illustrations by Stjepan Skoko and Vladimir Mikulić Vava, artists from the same region.

The cover features a photograph of a boy holding a paper boat, chosen as a symbol of youth, travel and transience. The title is rendered using a negative effect, directly referencing the film negatives that form the foundation of the book’s visual language.