Catalog // Stevie Sharp

 

 

                     

All photos were taken by Stevie Sharp

I found three catalogs that were all very different in size, content, and design. The first catalog is the biggest one of the bunch called, Andy Warhol "Giant" size. The book was authored by a large group of people. The book was roughly 15x25 inches in size and was about 2.5 inches thick. The catalog was very heavy based, almost like a scrapbook with only minimal text. Most of the text was quotes from Andy Warhol in a round-serifed typeface. It looked like a typewriter typeface. The point size of the type was rather large about the size of a nickel. The typeface they chose for the quotes really felt almost like a voice—it had character. The book was about Andy Warhol's road to success.

     The second catalog I chose was the smallest of the three and very text heavy. It was called, The New York Times Guide to the Arts of the 20th Century. It was written by the New York Times and was set in a Transitional serif type setting; Caslon or Baskerville. There was hardly any photographs and there was no color within the book. A different approach from the first catalog. The titles and the body text was in the same typeface, but the subtitles were in a geometric san serif font. This gave the catalog a sense of community. It read more like a text book than the first catalog.

     The third catalog was called, Art Deco The Definitive Guide to the Decorative Arts of the 1920s and 1930s. The catalog was written by Alastair Duncan and was about how the Deco movement showed up in all art forms like: sculpture, paintings, posters, glass, ceramics, lighting, jewelry, etc. The chapters were separated by each subject. This catalog was a good mixture of the two I discussed before hand. There was an even amount of photographs and body text. The type used in both body text and titles was a modern, Humanist san serif.

     Researching all of these catalogs gave me a really good idea of what my own catalog could look like. These three books has shown the range in which I can design myself. I personally was mostly influenced by the first catalog and how it was laid out to look more like a scrapbook instead of a text book. I prefer the type setting in the last book I discussed because the second book was too much like a boring text book.