Better Words, a hard back book by EVA International, offers an introduction to contemporary art and culture through the eyes of 8–12 year olds. We worked with EVA to design and illustrate the book which features new artistic terms, words and word-forms, that describe many aspects of contemporary art practice and its response to social and political issues in today’s world. Better Words marks EVA’s year-long collaboration with schools, leading artists, curators, and arts writers. All of the new terms featured in the book were created through workshops with 150+ children across schools in Limerick, Ireland.
What we did:
- Graphic Design
- Book Design
- Illustration
BOOK DESIGN — The brief was to design a publication that functions as a dictionary/glossary of new contemporary art terms developed by school children. We collaborated with EVA International to develop a design that explores the field of linguistic creation empowered by typography, colour and collages. The purpose of the typography is to fold, to organise the content but also to explore new paths of meaning. We introduced different levels of hierarchical elements using colours, fonts, illustration and technique to create a book that celebrates the linguistics of the children and can be dipped in and out of, rather than having to be read from the start.
ILLUSTRATION — We developed a concept for each word and its definition and designed a series of illustrations that reflect the playful child-led process, while also appealing to adult readers through humorous and quirky insight. Predominately typographic led, the illustrations incorporate a range of elements and design techniques including repetition, rotation, subtraction and distortion in order to create collages, that communicate the idea of each word definition.
