Stone Sleeper / Kameni spavač

Kameni spavač (Stone Sleeper) by Mak Dizdar is considered one of the defining works of Bosnian literature — a poetry collection rooted in the medieval tombstones (stećci) that mark the Bosnian landscape, translated into over ten languages, and studied across the world. For the centenary of the poet's birth in 2017, the Mak Dizdar Foundation commissioned the first authentic and definitive edition, prepared according to the highest textological and literary-historical standards, based on Dizdar's final authorised version from 1973. This was not a reprint. It was the first edition to fully honour the poet's last creative will.

Mak Dizdar was my grandfather. This project was personal in ways that go beyond design.

The design started where Dizdar's poetry starts — with the stećci and the medieval Bosnian world they carry. I created a custom typeface based on Bosančica, the old Bosnian Cyrillic script that fell out of use centuries ago. Select headings and shorter poems were transliterated into this script, giving readers a visual bridge to the same cultural layer the poetry draws from — a feature unique to this edition. The book is illustrated with drawings by Rudolf Kutzli, a Swiss artist and anthroposophist connected to Rudolf Steiner's circle, who spent years studying and documenting the stećci. His drawings bring a particular quality to the book — not photographic documentation, but an interpretive, almost meditative rendering of the tombstones that resonates with Dizdar's own poetic approach to the same subject. Every design decision was guided by the stećci themselves: their carved geometry, their weight in the landscape, the way they hold meaning without explanation. The typography, the illustrations, the materials, the layout — all shaped by the principle that the book should feel as considered and as permanent as the stones that inspired it.

This edition of Kameni spavač was recognised by the Mak Dizdar Foundation as the authentic and definitive edition — recommended as the standard for all future publications of the work. The custom Bosančica typeface gives it something no other edition has: a direct, visual connection between the medieval world Dizdar wrote about and the reader holding the book today. It is the kind of project where design serves something larger than itself.