Onomatopee is a platform and publisher focusing on art projects reflecting on communication. The foundation aims to question the context of our designed culture through research and presentations. Onomatopee asked us to design a series of small books for the ongoing series 'Nest', that spotlights emerging talent in art and design. Every publication represents one artist, that is also featured in an exhibition at the Onomatopee project space.
With this approach in mind we tried to translate this into a design, that creates a complete image as a series, but is at the same time able to highlight each artists quality. Each booklets cover is folded oblique on the book block. It can be seen as a mismatching cover, in a way referring to the unadapted way of working of the featured artists. It exposes bits of the inside content of the book. This factor changes in colour and position during the series. The inside attempts a nice mixture of full colour and PMS printed pages. The work of the specific artist is enhanced by the text from different authors and a specific chosen lettertype.
For Nest#5 'Manifestation, A plea for sense / making imspressions' we designed a book for Yasser Ballemans. The work of Yasser is focused on creating 3 dimensional volumes from a 2 dimensional material. He is investigating 2D material such as steel, clay, paper or plastic in the aspects of form, with a serious feeling but a playful touch. With this book we tried to respresent Yassers work by mixing a clay like reddish brown with a contrasting mintish green. These are accompanied by a serif font, with strong contrast in thickness of vertical and horizontals. The cover is placed in another position on the book block. Inside we used full colour sections and PMS section printed both on Reviva Offset.
The series has been awarded for the Best Dutch Book Designs of 2010 and was also shortlisted among the top 55 of Schönste Bücher aus aller Welt 2011 in Leipzig. The series was also featured in the #19 issue / Autumn 2011 of Graphic magazine.
www.onomatopee.net - www.yasserballemans.nl