Project brief: For Marvelous Museum, we were asked to create a unique object for a museum exhibition about a museum exhibition. We needed to distinguish the Oakland Museum’s Mark Dion book from previous publications on Dion, and we needed to appeal to the target audience of fans of the Oakland Museum, fans of Mark Dion and people interested in museum and curatorial work in general. A specific challenge was how to create an exhibition catalogue before the exhibition had been created.

Approach: Our team at Chronicle worked closely with the curator at the Oakland Museum who in turn pulled together an amazing team to generate the content. The project became a unique collaboration between Dion, OMCA, the editors of the Believer magazine, photographer David Maisel and Chronicle Books. We handled design and production in-house at Chronicle.

Effectiveness: The Oakland Museum has been extremely happy with the book. They sold 120 copies on the second day of the exhibition. We consider it successful because of the way the visual concept of the package seamlessly reflects and presents the contents. “I am stunned! Resplendent. I love it!” —Rene de Guzman, curator of the Oakland Museum

“I have yet to succumb but I know I will buy this book sooner or later. I like Dion’s work...but the clincher is the excitement of the volume’s visual and physical form.” —Rick Poynor, Print, February 2011

Marvelous indeed! A spectacular object whose intricate typography was not lost amid tipped-in pockets and reproduced materials.