Univers : books

Every year, members of the graduating class design the RISD Yearbook. The theme for 2019 was “Toolkit.” Students were asked to design their own name and page with a set of alphabet stencils and answer the question “What’s in your toolkit?” Students used any combination of letters or forms from the set of four alphabet stencils, created and fabricated by the RISD Design Guild, to draw their preferred name. The stencils created over 400 unique names in the book.

Structured from personal notes and memories of a lifetime, Specimen Days is a collection of descriptions, excerpts of prose poetry, lists, short essays, some consideration of politics, portraits of illustrious characters and ordinary people, letters, and quotes. The book design was inspired by Whitman’s habit of storing dry tree leaves in his notebooks. The cover and inner pages are illustrated with leaf silhouettes. Each of the 1,000 copies of the edition has a different leaf on the cover, resulting in a print run of 1,000 unique covers.

Beginning with photography of the artwork produced for the exhibition, the book goes on to provide further context through photography of the installation process alongside the exhibition statement; documentation of performances held in, on, and around the work; interviews with the artists about their processes and past work; and essays on the history of public art in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The book’s design references the visual language of construction and division of public space, reinforcing the exhibition’s theme of belonging and questioning the lines that unite and divide a city.

This monograph celebrates the twenty topsy-turvy years of Pannonian Challenge—an international extreme sports competition held in Osijek, Croatia. To relay a sense of the event’s lively character, the layout was designed to feel positively chaotic and appealing through manual manipulations and an unorthodox grid. The subtle uniformity of the oversized spreads and body copy provides a pleasant rhythm and easy navigation throughout. Photographs as the backbone interplay with headlines and manual graphic interventions. Animating the spreads and pull quotes is a bold typography designed by Nikola Đurek, befitting the urban feel of Pannonian Challenge.

The objective was to create a book that speaks meaningfully to a non-design audience. The cover should entice viewers to open and discover, through essays, project descriptions, and design reflections, how design affects and reflects our culture. It was important to make the content vibrant and accessible, allowing viewers to open at random and be engaged. The intention was to make the book a design object in its own right. To identify sections, essays are printed in dayglow-ink spreads, full-bleed details appear on recto (right-side) pages, and Morla’s “designisms” are printed with white ink on vellum.

For the first time, a nonfiction book has brought a hundred years of Red Cross nurses in Wuerttemberg to life, ranging from modest beginnings to a modern organization. A three-sided trimmed cardboard tape with hot foil embossing and a straight spine accentuate the modern character of the book, in contrast to the mostly historical content. The book contains several original historical documents to bring the work of the German Red Cross sisters alive. Great quotes and text insets immerse readers immediately in their stories.

This bilingual edition is dedicated to Valdis Āboliņš, Latvian exile, cultural activist, and the driving force behind the Fluxus movement in Aachen and nGbK in West Berlin, virtually unknown in Latvia. His ideas and heritage, like a lost and found message, were finally delivered to Latvia in this envelope-like edition, a reference to mail art—his passion and way to communicate with the outer world in the pre-internet era. Each section uses a different paper tone and starts with a gate fold that physically divides the content. Chapters in English are marked in the cut side. Each book holds one of four facsimiles of his letters.

This book shows the winning works of the professional and student groups, and it covers important events such as GDC’s development over the years, as well as the GDC show, work review, and design conference.

81.–1., 1.–81. is an index of eighty-one works and two typefaces created at the Yale School of Art from 2015–2017. Reprinted in 2019, the softcover catalogue raisonné features a custom four-color profile of fluorescent blue, fluorescent pink, gold, and black with gilded edges.