Gift Book · Illustration · Editorial Design

Pippa’s Passport

A handmade faux passport gifted to a friend before her 21st birthday — a forged laissez-passer to the bars of New York, complete with stamps, visas, and verse in French and English.

Designer

Jack Murray

Timeline

2023

Medium

Print Book,
Illustration, Verse

Deliverables

6-Page Booklet,
Custom Stamps & Visas

The Brief

A gift for a friend turning twenty-one. The conceit: a passport issued by the “Republic of JWM” granting her early diplomatic access to a set of New York bars she’d otherwise have to wait to enter. The cover reads Passeport — À la Vie Nocturne, a passport to nightlife.

Every detail of a real passport is parodied: machine-readable zone, photograph, place of issue (“Chez Lucie”), authority (“Ministre de Jack”), and a Mentions Spéciales notice warning that entry may still be refused.

Concept

Built as a small printed booklet, the book runs bilingual throughout — verses in English answered by their French translations, in the style of a real travel document. A Dorothy Parker epigraph opens the book; a Hemingway line about doing-sober-what-you-said-you’d-do-drunk presides over the visa page.

The visas themselves are a love letter to a specific geography: The Woods, The Should’s, Winnie’s, Shinnies, Nowadays, Shower Maze, Le Bain — each rendered as its own miniature stamp with bottle counts and 21+ seals.

Process

The book was designed page-by-page in spreads, mixing collage, illustration, typewriter text, hand-lettering, and treated photography. The polka-dot cover and back were painted to evoke pulp-paperback French stationery. Verses were written first, in both languages, then laid into compositions built around them.

The result is part travel document, part zine, part inside joke — an object built entirely for one reader.

“Oh Pippa, the bars you’ll go — all with a simple photo, si seulement ils sachent of your falsified laissez-passer.”

From the Inside Cover

Next Project

Leaving Queens →

Pippa’s Passport — opening spread, Dorothy Parker epigraph

Pippa’s Passport — inside cover, Republic of JWM