Royal College of Art Research RCA Exhibition Catalogue
Design Karin von Ompteda & Peter Crnokrak
“Research RCA, with 100+ students, plays a key role in the development of research in art and design on both a national and international level. In its continuing commitment to promote the work of its student body, the College for the first time this year undertook a review of student work in exhibition form.
Our role as curators, exhibition and graphic designers was to balance the needs of individual students exhibiting their work with that of representing the student body as a whole while being keenly aware to promote the unique qualities of Research RCA.
As an accompaniment to the exhibition, we designed an A3 catalogue that verbally and pictorially describes the work of seven students chosen to represent the seven different schools that comprise Research RCA. The department also requested a means by which to represent the entire student body–in particular to visually represent the complex varietal make-up of the within and extra-college dynamics that influence the output of research. To this end, we created an information visualisation that shows the distribution of all Research students across departments. Each student was recorded with regard to school, department, degree type (MPhil or PhD), project type (Project or Thesis), status (Part or Full-Time), nationality and relationships to collaborators and funding agencies (arched connection lines). The typography-only data visualisation capitalizes on the inherent form differences between typefaces to allow for visual differentiation of the above categories. The manner in which we used Lineto’s Akkurat (three weights and italics) and Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Didot (three weights and italics + seven contrast variants) allowed for a visually flexible system of form relationships in representing data while at the same time imbuing the visualisation with a distinctly ‘graphic design’ feel.
The end result is a complex, though surprisingly telling snapshot of the Research RCA student body and the relations they bare with national and international art and design agencies and institutions.”
Acknowledgements: Peter for the /images and the article information :)
This post is tagged Catalogues, The Luxury of Protest
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