Saskia Leek:
Desk Collection
AWARD: HIGHLY COMMENDED, 2014
PUBLICATION DESIGN AWARDS MUSEUMS AUSTRALIA
DISCIPLINE: PUBLICATION
MY ROLES: GRAPHIC DESIGNER (SOLE),
PRINTER LIAISON
In an era of ever larger and louder artworks, Walters Art Award-winning artist, Saskia Leek, is known for the intimate quality of her paintings. Desk Collection catalogues sixty of her works in a survey exhibition spanning from 1994 to 2012.
In Saskia's paintings I saw a child-like nostalgia—albeit one with tinged with the sinister. The book I produced has a cover with a dark spine, reminiscent of a school journal, and its text is bold and simple.
I planned to use details of Saskia's paintings for the cover, section dividers and end paper, but found that the photos weren't high enough resolution to allow for such drastic crops. However, she offered to repaint the details I'd chosen, at a much larger scale, and, once scanned, these were more than sufficient for my idea to work. The result is a book full of colour, which is particularly impactful on the first flip-through.
A few of the beautiful colour reproductions of Saskia’s works were placed, where relevant, within the two essays, but the majority of the sixty-five reproductions were in the last half of the book, where the reader is allowed time to spend with each of them. Only a tiny Roman numeral—a nod to school textbooks—distracts from experiencing the imagery.
Invitingly easy to read. Great use of colour coding. Well-chosen stock works well with the artworks. Faux interpretation of traditional binding techniques is effective.