Joana Rêgo

New York Type Directors Club – Typographic Excellence Award, TDC 56, 2009

Every book or catalogue presents its own design problems. The resolution of these problems is reflected in the manner in which the relationship between the different ingredients (content) is handled.

In this catalogue, Joana Rego's paintings are the principle ingredient and each one of her 23 paintings is given the necessary space to be viewed with comfort by placing each one on the left-hand side of a double spread. On the facing page only a small caption.

The next ingredient are the texts. They are not part of the artists work. Instead they are interpretations and observations of her work. They are the equivalent of a 'reading in between the lines' that writers often make about the text of others. For that reason they are placed 'in between the pages' on which her work appears. They are reproduced on a different paper and the pages are cut to a different size in order to represent a book within a book.

The Câmara de Matosinhos (Matosinhos City Hall) is the entity that creates the context for the public viewing of her work. It is the entity that both harbours and projects her work. The equivalent of such a function in a book is the cover. It is the element that envelopes the pages and provides the support for the binding. Consequently, the original idea was to place the texts of the Mayor and the Councillor for Culture on the front and back cover, wrapping around the catalogue. Sadly, this solution was rejected and instead, another text, by Joana herself, was used to perform this function on the front and back cover.

Finally, in order to resolve a perennial problem in art catalogues related to giving the viewer an indication of the scale of the works, a photograph of Joana especially taken in her studio appears on a double page spread at the beginning of the catalogue in which the painting behind her is exactly the same size and in the same position as the paintings that are reproduced in the rest of catalogue.
 

Date 2009
Client Galeria Municipal de Matosinhos
Format 24cm x 34cm
Pages 96