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Design Category
Book design, 2003
Design firm
Heavy Meta (New York, New York)
Collection
(2004) 50 Books/50 Covers of 2003
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The artist Kara Walker is best known for her provocative black cut-paper silhouettes that confront slavery, sex, violence, and racial stereotypes. This catalog accompanied an exhibition of a selection of works at the Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and included many previously unpublished pieces.
Earlier publications that featured Kara’s work often reproduced it as black-and-white line art, but since we wanted to convey the scale, context, and tactile nature of the work more accurately, we used four-color reproductions and included floor and ceiling details in installation shots whenever possible. In order to accommodate large images of her room-size dioramas, we chose to use a horizontal format.
The formal language of Kara Walker’s work consists primarily of compositions using intricately cut black shapes arranged in narratives. To complement this, the structure of the book’s typography is based on rectangular blocks: body copy sits in justified columns while overprinted black boxes with different finishes for display type. This allows the large background type to read as either figure or ground depending on the way the light hits it, making reference to Kara’s flip of the Victorian tradition of using white silhouettes.
“Great typographic voice—referential yet fresh—that embodies Walker’s work well. Every part of this book is considered, from its tactile, understated cover, to its half title, to the checklist and copyright page.” Cheryl Towler Weese