Toner Family Name

During the first wave of COVID lock downs, William J Doherty sat down and documented the history of his family’s nickname ‘Toner’.

Those of us from rural Ireland will know that many families have nicknames, due to their surnames being the same. This was a traditional way of identifying who you were speaking of or looking for.

I was approached to take William’s words and visualise them in to a special book to celebrate his birthday.

I was give creative freedom to design a piece that would be easy to read and to show off the precious photographs the family had gathered. I used the colours from the commissioned painting of the family homestead to run throughout the book, and chose Amargo as the headline font. This font was inspired by the Albertus font which was created in the late 1940s. This fonts gives echo's of heritage and tradition to this historical book.

"During Covid lockdown, my father researched and wrote a story on our family tree going back 200 years. I asked Mari to design a booklet of the story which would be presented to Dad on his 80th birthday. Mari delivered a beautifully designed piece of work which really brought the story to life visually. It was both contemporary and historical in its design. It was a huge hit! Everyone loves it. Dad was in a state of shock when he got it and very emotional. I’ve never seen him react to anything like that. He loved the design and it has been such a great talking point over the last few days."

Karen Lowey