The first books with Onça Design!
This week I received in the mail two books that I'm very excited about: The Promise of Paradise by Andrew Scott (Harbour Publishing) and The Orange Balloon Dog by Don Thompson (Douglas & McIntyre). I designed the interiors of both books, but they are each special for a different reason.
British Columbia has housed more utopian settlements in the past 150 years than anywhere else in North America. The Promise of Paradise explores why BC is such an attractive spot and details the rise and fall of several of these communities, in an attempt to discover what drives this search for paradise. Maps and lots of archival photographs complement the text.This is also the first book to ever feature an Onça credit line—and I'm immensely proud of that. The headings use various weights of Klinic Slab, a modern font with a historical feel, and the body is set in the long-form text classic Adobe Jenson Pro.The Promise of Paradise: Utopian Communities in British Columbia, Expanded Second Edition, by Andrew Scott. Harbour Publishing, 2017. 6 × 9 inches, 272 pages, $24.95.
The bizarre world of art trading is the subject of The Orange Balloon Dog. The book is named after the iconic sculpture by Jeff Koons, which in 2013 sold at a Christie's auction for a price so high it beat the previous living-artist record by more than 50%. It is stuffed with wonderful quotes about the art world, and includes an 8-page colour insert illustrating some of the key artwork discussed.I had a lot of fun working on this book. As an art-school grad, I had a good familiarity with the subject and years of art history classes to draw from. The big, striking headings and epigraphs in Avenir Next Bold seemed fitting for a topic that is always making headlines for its multi-million-dollar sales. The body text is Albertan Pro, adding a touch of Canada to such a global subject.The Orange Balloon Dog: Bubbles, Turmoil and Avarice in the Contemporary Art Market, by Don Thompson. Douglas & McIntyre, 2017. 6 × 9 inches, 224 pages, $24.95.