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Design Category
Book design, 2004
Art director/creative director
Martin Venezky
Collection
(2005) 50 Books/50 Covers of 2004
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Since the book is a monograph of my work, it gave me the opportunity to curate and catalog my work and elaborate on the thinking, philosophy and environment that created it. I wanted this book to mimic a laboratory rather than a gallery, as if the reader were visiting me in mid-project and was encouraged to wander around, open up drawers and ask lots of questions.
I decided to group projects casually, sometimes with projects of similar genres (books, posters), sometimes as separate case studies (“Bordertown,” “Sundance”) and still other times as distinct processes (“Experimentation”). The pivotal piece in the book is the huge wall collage that graces my studio’s walls and occupies a special gatefold, along with an exhaustive catalog of its individual components.
Because of the investment in time and energy that I put into this book, I have hopes that it will become my portfolio’s centerpiece—something I could send out on request that explains my work and its excitement as well as I could ever do in person. In the meantime, it provides a guide for my students and other young professionals as to alternative, independent career paths and design as a lifelong pursuit.