Alphabet City #8: Lost in the Archives book
studio ABCd, Toronto, Ontario, 2002
Description
The client, Alphabet City Media, is a cultural studio based in Toronto that has been producing multidisciplinary anthologies, conferences and exhibitions since 1991. Lost in the Archives—an expansive collection of visual art and writing about the contemporary state of knowledge storage—was the studio’s most ambitious effort to date. The design challenge was daunting: a massive bulk of disparate works had to be presented in an accessible, navigable and unified object. To encourage readers in shaping their own archival narratives, design elements that control the content (section dividers, chapter starts, headings) were understated, while individual pieces were elaborated in great detail; for one piece we designed new glyphs from hand-drawn notations for a nearly extinct Bushman language.
Credits
- Design firm
- studio ABCd
- Art director
- Gilbert Li
- Designer
- Gilbert Li
- Design assistants
- Anika Azad, Amy Chan
- Trim size
- 7 3/8 x 10 7/8 inches
- Pages
- 776
- Quantity printed
- 1,000
- Compositor
- Gilbert Li
- Typefaces
- Clifford, Central and Eastern European diacritics by Gilbert Li, customized by Robert Snider of FontShop Canada
- Printer
- Imaging Excellence
- Papers
- Jenson Satin White 80 lb. Text, Neenah Classic Laid Antique Grey 80 lb. Cover
- Binder
- York Bookbinders
- Binding method
- Smyth-sewn
- Jacket designer
- Gilbert Li
- Jacket printer
- Lunar Caustic Press (letterpress)
- Editors
- Rebecca Comay, John Knechtel
- Publisher
- Alphabet City Media Inc.