"The History of Western Art"
MA Book Design, The University of Reading
234mm x 294mm (9.2in x 11.6in)
The content of this book was prepared to serve two purposes. The first level of text consisted of large essays with supporting thumbnail images while the second level consisted of shorter supporting essays with high quality images for cross reference.
The design features opening essays that focus on the text and use thumbnail images as visual notes. The multi-column format allows the images to visually align with their corresponding text; allowing the images to be "read" along with the text. The result is not only a dynamic layout, but an extremely effective textual and visual story.
The supporting essays were designed using scale and column width to present the text as subsidiary to the opening essays as well as to their corresponding images. For this image based content, care was taken to design the layout system in a manner which allows the reader to view all related images on a single spread. To enhance the communicative ability of the spread, images were divided into size categories based on the size of the original artwork so as to offer further level of communication; a general representation of scale.
Once the content was well understood and the grid prepared, the system determined all of the layouts.