AIGA Design Archives

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Design Category
Promotional design and advertising, 1998
Design firm
studio blue (Chicago, Illinois)
Collection
(1999) Communication Graphics: 20

Description

This catalogue documents an exhibition of whose work examines the role of portraiture and identity in contemporary art. In designing the book we sought to play off the notion of identity, making the book design as generic as possible. All titling type was scanned from the plastic letters used ubiquitously on changeable signs, from funeral parlors to discount carpet stores. The essays are typeset in large, straightforward Akzidenz Grotesk.

We also inserted a distinct voice in the book that acts something like a Greek chorus: twenty-six concrete images of identity (such as fingerprints, passports, and DNA), which act as foils to the more fluid representation of identity proposed by the artworks in the show. These twenty-six illustrations run in a continuous loop alongside the artwork and are captioned in the back of the book.

Credits
Art directors: Kathy Fredrickson, Cheryl Towler-Weese
Designer: Cheryl Towler-Weese
Research: Matt Simpson, Kathy Fredrickson
Typography: Matt Simpson
Writers: Laura Letinsky, Elizabeth Bloom, Various
Typefaces: Akzidenz Grotesk, Scanned Plastic Letters
Printer: M&G Printing
Paper: Weyerhaeuser Cougar 80# Text
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Client: The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art