A few months ago, while we were camping somewhere deep in the jungle of Thailand, an unexpected email landed in our inbox. Designer and author Jason Rubino asked if we’d like to be part of LAND, the new Land Rover book by Gestalten.
We definitely didn’t expect that.
At the time, we were still somewhere in the middle of our two-year overland journey from Switzerland to Southeast Asia, living out of our Land Rover Defender and probably more concerned about where we would camp that night than ending up in a beautifully designed coffee-table book.
And now, a few months later, we finally have Gestalten’s LAND book in our hands, with some of our own adventures printed inside. How cool is that?
There’s something really special about seeing moments from our journey on paper. Especially in a book dedicated to a vehicle that has become such a huge part of our own story.
For us, the Land Rover Defender has never just been a car. Over the past two years, it has been our home, our kitchen, our bedroom and the thing that carried us more than 60,000 kilometres through deserts, mountains, jungles and some of the most remote places we’ve ever been.
And that is also what makes LAND such a beautiful book. It looks beyond the vehicle itself and celebrates the history, design, people and adventures connected to Land Rovers around the world. A car that started as a simple workhorse has become an icon, and almost every one of them seems to have a story attached to it.
Ours certainly does.
Seeing a small part of our Land Rover overlanding journey become part of this collection feels pretty surreal. From opening that email somewhere in the Thai jungle to now flipping through the finished book back home, it’s one of those unexpected little moments from this journey that we’ll definitely remember.
If you want to grab a copy of Gestalten’s LAND: The Land Rover as Design Icon for yourself, you can find it here. 🤍