Summary

This project was a collaboration with Rational Beauty and a fantastic opportunity to contribute to the design. The book explores Black identity with more than a hundred works by Black artists from Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain, the United States, South America, and the African continent with photographs from Dr. Kenneth Montague’s Wedge Collection.

The book uses the Martin typeface from Vocal Type as the display font — with plenty of spirit and irregularities. Using a photo album as a metaphor for the cover design was a natural and expressive way to present the various artists. A blind embossed window surrounds each photograph on the cover, adding tactility. The salon-style presentation lets the viewer experience the collection at a glance — capturing black people as fully engaged human beings in their world.

Punctuating the shifts in content — Community, Identity, and Power — each of the chapter-opening spreads is flooded with pale-yellow ink with chapter titles and introductions, assisting the reader in pausing and contemplating the next chapter’s curation and purpose.

Credits & details

Typefaces