Catalogue for a Hayward Gallery touring exhibition, featuring the work of 24 artists responding to the theme of magic, plus essays and archive material.
Working closely with both the client Hayward Touring Exhibitions and the show's curators, we produced this 116 page catalogue as a companion to the exhibition which tours the country during 2010. The brief was quite complex with different aspects to be clearly presented as separate entities – essays by the curators, commissioned texts from writers and critics, a central collage, artists works, and an archive of objects and printed ephemera from magic's history.
We wanted to create a rich and surpising document. We presented each section quite differently, using a range of paper stocks to signal the start of a new section. The catalogue is divided in half by a large fold-out section displaying a rich mix of collaged images and texts from historical and contemporary sources.
A single typeface is used throughout to hold together the varied elements as one design. It was chosen for being a contemporary font with all the weights we needed, but still retaining a few flourishes that allude to the showmanship of magic performance.
Choosing a cover image for a group show is never easy. The final image, Colin Guillemet’s ‘Anything But A Rabbit’, was the perfect example of a work that adds a twist to a traditional icon of magic.
Magic Show is on tour in Derby, Blackpool, Carlisle, Cardiff and ends up in London in October 2010.