View From A Blue Moon Book

Design Agency: Wedge & Lever
Project Type: Produced, Commercial Work
Client: Hurley
Location: Costa Mesa, CA, USA

Before production of View From A Blue Moon (an action sports film starring John Florence) began, we knew that a print piece would be just as critical to the project’s success as the film. A plan was developed to have photographers on hand to meticulously document every moment of the production process. Between these photographers, John Florence’s personal images, and terabytes of 4K footage to pull framegrabs from, there’d be more than enough visual content to create the in-depth documentation of the three-year project.

When production wrapped, nearly 50,000 images were cataloged. After three rounds of photo editing, we got the image selects down to a much more manageable amount: 2,000. These selects ranged from decades-old family photos to RED framegrabs shot from helicopters flying over desolate stretches of African coastline. We then collaborated with CR Stecyk III and the Hurley team to craft the written content, which ranges from unguarded interviews with the cast and crew to long-form essays.

It was crucial that the book and film felt like extensions of one another. For the look and feel, we extended the black-on-black aesthetic common throughout the film’s branding and focused on specialized printing techniques to instill a perception of understated sophistication. The book’s content structure mirrors the film, with each chapter identified by its starting timecode of hours, minutes, seconds, and frames.

The entire book production process, from concept to final product in hand, was nine months. We had countless internal rounds of design and editing before presenting the nearly-final product to John Florence, Blake Vincent Kueny (the Director), and the Hurley team. From there we made our finishing touches before working closely with the factory to move into production. The final product is something that we hope exists on a bookshelf for years to come.

What’s Unique?
Hurley essentially gave us carte blanche for the design of the book. We used this opportunity to incorporate many specialized printing techniques which speaks the film’s essence of understated sophistication. The cover features a black foil deboss of the logotype with the letters “o” in moon die-cut through the cover and end sheet, revealing a metallic print of the film’s poster image. Each chapter opener features transparent PVC insert pages with the section’s corresponding timecode from the film silkscreened. The book also features black gilded/flocked edges to maintain the black-on-black aesthetic used throughout the film’s branding.