Mary Egan Publishing Award for Best Typography 2018
Finalist
Designer: Aaron Beehre
Title: New China Eyewitness: Roger Duff, Rewi Alley and the art of museum diplomacy
Publisher: Canterbury University Press
Format: 240 x 173mm, 176pp. Hardback with jacket including a diary section printed on a tinted uncoated stock set in both English and Chinese and illustrated with photos from Duff’s original diary. The warm uncoated reproduction of the type and photographs speaks to the nostalgia of the publication. The plate section, illustrating objects collected by Roger Duff, is presented on clean white coated paper and sits in contrast to the rawness of the diary entries. The cover is folded in half and represents the bilingual nature of the book. The use of red overlay, gold foiling and gloss lamination against the matt laminated black and white photography alludes to the meeting of two worlds evidenced in Duff’s diary.
Typography: Goudy, Anaheim Gothic, Courier, Songti, SimSun, SimHei. The diaries are set in courier (English) and STKaiti (Chinese)
Judges’ Comments: Ambitious in its outset, the typography in this book attempts to capture the contrasting spirit of its contents; East and West, the past and the present, a book within a book. Multiple typefaces and ways of typesetting are employed. The judges applaud the boldness in not only contending with designing in two very different languages, but to use that as an opportunity to recreate and bring to life the experience of the journey from within the text for the reader.
