Magnolia Studio | Portfolio Sheldon E. Bradt's Civil War — Memoir

Being a history buff myself, I was excited when Abby Laib requested that I design her Uncle Gordon Laib's lifelong chronicle of his Great Grandfather Sheldon E. Bradt's Civil War experiences. I designed her father, Mike Laib's, memoir The Letters: Experiences of Vietnam 1969-1970 in 2019 and she wanted me to help her and her uncle with this new project.

Sheldon was 17 years old when he volunteered with the 18th Wisconsin Regiment and shipped out to Alabama to fight in the Civil War. Forty years after he returned, he developed his journal notes into articles about the battles, the soldiers who fought them, and the people who helped along the way. He submitted these articles to the New London Press in Wisconsin, who printed them for the families to read about their ancestors. Those accounts were discovered by his niece and nephew at the New London Public Library and they were sent to Uncle Gordon. He added these stories to the history he had been compiling with archival photos and other stories about the war. [ … Read More ]

I used two classic fonts, Bernhard Modern and Adobe Garamond and formatted the various content to reflect which narrator, author, or newspaper article was being quoted. I used Photoshop to touch up the archival photos and arranged them within the layout. The narrative was extremely graphic and made for a stressful copyediting experience. The Civil War was hell on earth and this harrowing account is true and profoundly sad. Amazing that Sheldon survived to tell his story.

Sheldon E. Bradt's Civil War — 1864-1865 is a 208-page, 8.5x11 inch, perfect-bound volume. I coordinated the self-publishing process for the family and this memoir is now available online: Buy on Amazon!
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