An Exclusive Guest Post from MinaLima to Celebrate Harry Potter’s Birthday

A sneak peek inside the magic of MinaLima!
 

 
We are so excited to take you into the world of Harry Potter as imagined by the award-winning design studio MinaLima, founded by Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima. This new edition of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, with interactive paper craft elements and over 150 full-color illustrations, will be out October 26th.
 
Here’s an exclusive sneak peek of Harry meeting his new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Gilderoy Lockhart, at Diagon Alley bookshop Flourish & Blotts.
 

 
How did you meet?
Mira: I started working on the very first Harry Potter film as a graphic designer and on the second film Eduardo joined me, kind of by serendipity. We met through a mutual friend — Eduardo is Brazilian and wanted to come and live in London, and that friend was literally the only person he knew who was doing graphics. During our 10 years working on the Harry Potter films, we created all the graphic props seen in the films: Harry Potter’s acceptance letter to Hogwarts, the Marauder’s Map, the Daily Prophet newspaper, the Advanced Potion-Making
book, and all the graphic props that make a fleeting appearance in the background or even don’t make the final film cut! Once the series had finished, we weren’t ready to stop working together so setting up a studio was the natural next chapter…
 
How did you determine what had the most potential in the book to create the paper craft elements?
Eduardo: We started by reading the book and creating a “book map” where we identify key moments, unusual twists, and visually interesting opportunities. We then decide whether these situations would be best represented as full page illustrations, spot illustrations, or interactive elements. It is also a very technical, three-dimensional process. We need to make sure the interactives and features are evenly spread out throughout the book and that manufacturing in volume will be feasible – quite the opposite of designing a book as a film prop!
 
 
Can you describe your process – how you work together?
Eduardo: Over the years we have developed quite an instinctive way of working together and taking ownership of different elements. I usually create the book map that I mentioned earlier and then discuss with Mira any changes that are needed. Meanwhile Mira starts envisioning the illustrative style and we share these with the design team as they develop. I may kick off the cover design and then Mira will jump in. We move back and forth like this, much as we do in our film design process. But, of course, this book is very much a MinaLima Studio project. We had a brilliant team of our own MinaLima magicians helping us bring our vision of Harry Potter’s world to life.
  
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets will be out October 26th. While you’re waiting, catch up with the MinaLima Edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, available now!
Shop these new MinaLina Harry Potter editions here!