Indonesia based illustrator and graphic designer Kathrin Honesta recently teamed up with her best friend Yu Yessi Lesmana to create ‘The Petite World’, an enchanting poetry art book – illustrated by Kathrin, written by Yessi, and published by Indonesian publisher Bukune.

Talking about the project, Kathrin says, “Yessi and I have been friends since high school, and we never imagined that we would end up publishing a book together one day. Yessi has always written poems in private, and I had been thinking about doing a small collaboration with her, like a few posts on Instagram as and when we could find the time (since we both work full-time). But when a publisher approached me to see if I was interested in publishing a book, I got the idea of doing an illustrated poetry book that combines my work with Yessi’s poetry.”

Yessi considers ‘The Petite World’ a very private project, and mentions that she wrote it a long time ago. “Deep down, I always knew that this would be a very emotional book for me. The process of making it has been unique, especially because this is a collaboration with my best friend. The whole process has been a great lesson, and it helped us form a deeper bond,” she says.

Kathrin (Left) and Yessi

The creation process has been interesting for Kathrin as well. “Since this is my first ever published book, I learnt a lot about the publishing process. And working together with my best friend was a surreal experience. We surely had our ups and downs, but I guess facing them together made the challenges quite bearable. Also, illustrating for poetry itself was quite refreshing in a way because poetry is rather abstract. It’s not like a narration where the author gives you vivid and descriptive information about what they want to portray. Instead, poetry is about a feeling, a mood. So I used a lot of metaphors and symbols in this book, which gave me a lot of freedom to express the message to the readers,” she says.

Here’s the link to buy the book.

A few pages from the book