Parts of an Exhibition Catalog

The parts of an exhibition catalog vary from book to book, but not so much that there isn't a definite pattern of what belongs in one. We grouped each part into one of three sections based on where it normally appeared in the books we looked at. The front matter is first and precedes the main content; both are followed up by the back matter.

Front Matter

• Cover/Dust Jacket/French Flap
• Blank page
• Title page 
• Book curator
• Authors
• Designers
• Exhibition title (shared with book).
• Publication Information
• Table of Contents
• Sponsors/Lenders to Exhibition
• Foreword

Main Matter

• Essays
• Picture/Plates

Back Matter

• Notes
• Bibliography
• Exhibition Checklist
• Section pages/Divider
• Chronology
• Index

The order of each part wasn't always in that exact location, but it was reliably in the section provided.

Harry Callahan - photographer

This book was made to accompany an exhibition of Harry Callahan's work put together by the National Gallery of Art. It was a travelling exhibition over the time period of March 1996 to September 1997. The exhibition was to show how Callahan progressed over the years as an artist. The book gives some back story on who he is and what he has done.

The book itself is well done. It is a hardback book and the front cover has the title letter-pressed into the cover. I think that it's really neat.

I peaked into the colophon and found that the book is typeset with Bulmer and Univers. Majority of the book is Bulmer. The headlines and body copy are all this serif face. Captions and quotations are set in Univers. These faces work really well with the book because Bulmer gives it an elegant and professional feel. This works well with the fact it is being used in an exhibition for a successful photographer.

I really enjoy how they incorporated the images with the text. It follows a clean grid and is varied throughout which helps to keep it visually interesting. I hope to bring some of how they've designed this book into the way I decide to put together the exhibition catalog we're about to design.

 

 

The Legend of Zelda

I've come to find that Gameinformer magazine does a really good job at body copy layout. This article in particular was for a celebration of 25 years of the Zelda franchise. They did a nice job of creating unity with variety throughout the entirety of the article. 

 

 

 

What I found to be nice within the layout of the article was the little details they kept throughout the entire article. Within the sub-sections they included the triforce. The first half of the article the triforce became a decoration at the intro paragraph of each sub-section. The second half of the article still included that detail but in a slightly different manner. 

Overall the way that the articles were split up was done well. There is plenty of variation between the pages to keep it visually interesting. The pull-quotes used are done nicely as well. The type used for the headers is a serif italic face. I'm not sure what the name of it would be. It loks to be a modern face, but I'm usually not good at determining that. The body copy is a sans-serif face. It's clean and easy to read. I'm not sure what the name of typeface is though. The body copy isn't justified which allows for the ragged edge on the right. It works for the overall flow and readability of the article. 

The way that the imagery is interlaced within the article is done well. There's a variation of how things are placed but you can tell that there is an underlying grid. This will influence how I think about laying out type and images together in my own projects. 

The Occupied Times

This week I found an interesting newspaper through fontsinuse.com. This newspaper is called The Occupied Times and it is based in London. The newspaper went into circulation only a few days after the occupation began in London. After six months it became a monthly publication of 24 pages.

The newspaper intrigued me because of the interesting choice in typography for the headlines and intro caps. The typefaces they decided to use is called Bastard and PF DIN. They inset letters from Bastard within PF DIN to cleverly work with the occupying metaphor. It also has to deal with how brands were using visual language of protest to promote products. The designers of the magazine said that brands stole that language, so they were stealing theirs. It's an interesting thing to use typography to promote an idea within a newspaper.

Bastard is a reinterpretation of blackletter semiotics and comes from Barnbrook's VirusFonts. PF DIN was designed by Panos Vasiliou of Athens-based foundry Parachute.

I think that it coud be interesting to experiment with mixing typefaces in a clever way in my own work. It is definitely something that I will consider depending on what the project is.

http://fontsinuse.com/uses/3144/the-occupied-times

Split Personality - Fox Quarterly

Fox Quarterly is a catalog sent out 4 times a year. They can fall under a variety of categories: moto, bike, and season. The catalogs contain the new products as well as the occasional article on a person sponsored by Fox. This particular image is from the Fall 2012 catalog.

I found an article's title page to be interesting. It uses a slab-serif display face for the headline, and I could not find the font's name. It uses a bold and light weight for the words to push the concept of the title. The word personality is also unconventionally split with a hyphen in the headline to further push the concept. I thought this was well done. It definitely says split personality to me. I want to be able to incorporate clever things like this when I use type in my projects in the future.

Gameinformer

Here I present an article from a magazine called Gameinformer. The article is titled “Why we Play.” The typeface used to create the headlines is a square serif typeface. According to whatthefont.com the typeface is called Boton BQ Pro designed by Albert Boton in 1986 at the Berthold type foundry. The quotations are also set in Boton BQ. The body of the article is a sans-serif typeface, of which the name I did not find.

Gameinformer is a magazine for videogame enthusiasts. It is a part of the GameStop network. It covers the releases of new games, reviews games that are out, and anything game related you can think of.

This article is well designed. I remember the first time I skimmed through the magazine it caught my eye. The way the type is handled amongst the illustration brought me to being interested in what it had to say. The type hierarchy is nice, and the insets help to break up the columns of text. The grid used to layout the article gives a clean feel.

The way this article is designed will influence how I think about incorporating text and images together. This is one way of making a clean combination of the both without losing the playfulness of the illustration. 

Slanted Magazine

The twentieth issue of Slanted Magazine is dedicated to early nineteenth century born slab serif typefaces. It was released November 2012. 

The slab serifs were used in advertising posters and flyers because of their strong visual expression. Slab serifs are good for headlines since they carry their weight and can be decorative. They have a strong visual presence due to how they are designed. 

These particular images are from a collection of posters and images from the American Goldrush. I enjoyed them because they show variety and have a strong hierarchy of information. The most important words of the page are huge and allow you to see what the poster is about. The detailed information is much smaller acting almost like fine print. I think that the strong hierarchy of information would be something that could influence my own creative work. There could be a place for the strong hierarchy, or I could just use the idea of that and tame it down to make it more applicable to whatever it is that I am doing. 

http://issuu.com/slanted/docs/slanted20/25