publisher: Creative Growth / 5 Continents Editions (Italy)
type: Book, complete project
spec notes: Hard cover, on debossed and printed chipboard, with uncovered spine to expose binding threads. 208 pages, printed full color.
To celebrate its 40th year of operation, Creative Growth commissioned Bookish Design to shape and create a book based on the artists, art, history, and cultural significance of the center. Creative Growth is an art studio that works with adults with disabilities to foster talent in any medium of interest to the artist. With four decades of work stored in physical and photographed archives, the first challenge was to determine how to tell the story.
In collaboration with the center, Bookish Design outlined three ways to tell the story: by artist, by medium, and chronologically. The chronological idea turned out to fit this book best as it did not highlight those artists whose work is in the collection of MoMA over those whose work isn’t, or to play favorites in any other way. It simply allows the story of the center to accumulate over pieces of art shown in order of their creation, presented on the page in loose associations, sometimes thematic, sometimes visual.
The pieces were all selected by Bookish Design from the full panoply of the Creative Growth archive (read: a lot of time was spent going through literally tons of artwork in the center’s attic, as well as looking at carrousels of slides through a loupe — most of which had to be re-scanned for print-worthy files).