Faculty & Alumni Exhibition Catalog
Overview
March–July 2025
InDesign, Illustrator, publication design, design systems
Collaborators: Sherri Krazl & David Shuppert
I designed an 88-page catalog and brand system for the Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum for their quadrennial Faculty & Alumni Exhibition. This exhibition features the work of 18 faculty, 7 emeriti, 14 alumni from Miami University.
Design Brief
8.5" x 8.5"
48 spreads
Full color
Soft cover
Perfect Bound
Responsible for designing:
Cover and spine
Table of contents and colophon
Curators’ statements
Artist spreads
Process
Sketching
The museum didn't provide any specific direction at this point in the project, leaving the creative direction up to my discretion. At this point in the process, I’m was looking to generate as many ideas as possible.
Sketching on lined/graph paper allows me to keep my ideas more organized and was particularly helpful in this project for drawing square thumbnails.
After a period of sketching, I opened Illustrator to begin some quick concepting. This part of the process helps me start feeling out ideas and seeing which ones have the most potential.
Initial Concepts
With no guiding theme for this exhibition, I looked for a way to anchor myself conceptually. The goal I had for these concepts was to really activate the “2025” and create a design that would be unique to this year.
Concept 1
The first concept is based on the idea of a 5x5 square–I found a connection between the square catalog and 2025 being a perfect square (45^2). The use of negative space as well as the playful texture subvert the rigidity of the grid, reflecting the experimental pieces in this exhibition.
Concept 2
For this concept, I was really drawn to the idea of imbuing a simple design
with clever visual semantics: the 2 and the 5 are the same line, just mirrored horizontally. Again, this is unique to 2025.
The client preferred Concept 1 but raised concerns that it felt "stale" and looked too similar to a catalog that had been done in the past.
They also added they wanted a design that could act as a container to showcase featured artwork. I was excited to receive this new design challenge and went back to the drawing board for another round of ideation.
Back to the drawing board
I started by looking for some inspiration. I was really drawing to circular motifs like these below and saw the potential to use concentric circles as image frames.
I found a unique typeface, Megascope Variable, with a very round zero to use
as a base for my customized type.
In order to better visualize how the numbers could intertwine and overlap, I cut
them out of paper and played around with different options before bringing my
work back into Illustrator.
Final Concept
I brought the design above to the client, and they approved the concept. They liked how the design looked but raised concerns about licensing issues or favoritism with having artwork appear on the cover.
They decided they wanted to use the design to feature artwork in some of the exhibition materials but no longer wanted pieces from the exhibition to appear on the cover.
We decided that using some public domain stock imagery could work to fill the image frames. I developed these iterations below, of which the middle design was chosen to move forward.
Catalog Spreads
While I continued to make edits on the catalog cover over the course of the project, the heavy-lifting in terms of the look and feel was complete! At this point, I started working on the interior spreads.
The objective I had with the interior layout was to match the modern, open feel of the cover. I really wanted to keep the layout simple and let the artwork come forward.
I developed an asymmetrical layout using a 3-column grid that would allow me to fit the artists' position, departments, etc. beneath their profile photo and use the other two columns for the bios and artist statements.
I surprisingly found that this step of the process didn’t involve as many design changes but presented new challenges with making edits to the content provided by the museum.
The design process coincided with the collection of information from the 38 artists from the exhibition, and I was challenged with meeting review deadlines while making updates as content was coming in last-minute from the curators.
Production
After several rounds of review and revisions with changes to content, design, and formatting, the final files were finally ready to be sent off for the first proof, which we would review before ordering the full number of catalogs.
It’s very fortunate that we were running ahead of schedule at this point, as we encountered numerous issues with our printing company and file structuring that resulted in us having to order not only a second but a third proof.
In our first proof, all of the pages were offset by one page. We could still use this to send around for the curator and directors to review the content, but we wanted to order a second copy.
While reviewing the first proof, I noticed the body typeface looked a bit thicker than I expected. After gaining approval from the RCCAM designers, I changed the body to one font weight lighter to get a cleaner look and better balance the page.
I was working very closely with the designers at RCCAM on this step and learned all about the best practices for production and how to handle a project when things don’t go as planned. In the end, we opted to go with a different printing provider and were able to meet the production deadlines!
Deliverables
Insights
Throughout all the trouble-shooting, rounds of review, and production process, I was able to strengthen my skills as a designer, communicator, and project leader. Seeing my work at the opening reception and connecting with the artists was an incredibly fulfilling and validating moment.
This catalog also challenged me to understand InDesign on a higher level, as well as how to set up my files and create templates to communicate my vision to collaborators and reviewers and ensure successful implementation.
"A designer tries to make an object as naturally as a tree puts forth a leaf." BRUNO MUNARI