Book design
Brief
Design a book cover and a layout for a coffee table book about Joseph Beuys. Joseph Beuys was a 20thcentury German artist, teacher, performance artist and art theorist. He was a key figure in the development of Happenings and introduced a concept of what we now know as a performance art.
Cover
The idea to use thick natural felt for the case was immediate. Many artist’s artworks are made of it or contain it. Felt was also a significant life-saving material for Joseph Beuys. During the WWII his plane crashed on the Crimean Front. Based on this incident Beuys “fashioned the myth” that he was rescued from the crash by nomadic Tartar tribesmen who wrapped his body in animal fat and felt and nursed him back to life.
The typographically arranged name on the case copies the cover. The cut-out window is strategically placed to facilitate two functions. It reveals just about enough of the unusual details of the cover photograph to incite the desire to pull out the book and see the photo in full. The second function is to illustrate the experience of the artist being wrapped up in felt – the experience considered to be “serving as a powerful origin myth for his artistic identity”.
Joseph Beuys is considered to be arebel, non-conformist. However digging deep into research made me realise thatpost-war Eastern Germany intellectual rebelliondoesn’t come with the same range of visuals we typically associated with theword rebel, for example, British punk of the 70’s or cultural disruptors we seenowadays.It was very German –orderly, clean, systematic, intellectual, made of natural materials and made tolast. It was still time of shortages and things were expensive. Throw away lifestyle didn’t exist and the concept of ripping up clothes for the purpose ofcultural protest was unthinkable.
After all Joseph Beuys was a rebel who wore asuit and a hat and was a university professor.
I continued with the photograph chosen for the book cover, which depicts Beuys’ 1965 performance How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare. It is absurd enough to catch viewers’ attention and evoke curiosity. At the same time, it represents well Beuys’ conceptual approach to art and his influence as a teacher.
It was difficult to depict a rebel within that context. I started setting the tone with the combination of typefaces appearing on the cover. First is a sans-serif condensed font used for artist’s surname is typical of mid-century Europe and similar to what appeared on posters and in press surrounding Beuys at the time. The second typeface used for the artist’s name and the body copy is an older British serif font bringing in the notion of old times - industrial revolution and European social turmoil. The visual inspiration for using this typeface comes from the first issue of The Capital by Karl Marx – the essence of historic German intellectual rebellion.
Layout
The layout of the book offers no surprises. Firstly, I wanted to stay true to the artist’s origins and German clean and orderly approach to design. Secondly, it is important to mention the lack of consistency of visual materials available. Not many photographs were taken of Beuys performances and the image quality varies due to the limitations of technology of the time. I countered this visual inconsistency with clean and explicitly structured layout grid, classic body copy typeface and slightly larger than expected font size.
The result is a coffee table book that presents the artist in his context. The book speaks the visual language of post war Eastern Germany but conveys the artist’s conceptual forward thinking.
