BRAND DESIGN // PUBLICATION DESIGN
Beth Lipman: ReGift
Glass artist Beth Lipman was commissioned to create an artwork for the Toledo Museum of Art inspired by the museum. Lipman worked for almost five years on her piece, specifically creating it in honor of the museum’s co-founder, Florence Scott Libbey. The resulting work is a three-quarter-life-size recreation of the Libbey’s home parlor room, entirely cast in translucent glass. TMA then produced a publication of the same title as the artwork; this book contained documentation and process behind Lipman’s work, as well as archival essays and photographs of Florence’s life and contributions to the arts in Toledo.
Client: The Toledo Museum of Art
As the exhibition came before the publication, much of the exhibition graphic design approach could be applied to the book (and book jacket) design. Ornamentation taken directly from Florence and her husband’s mausoleum placards at Woodlawn Cemetery became in-gallery filigree. A tone-on-tone ghostly exhibition title (Beth Lipman: ReGift) allowed the text and title to recede and give the artwork additional prominence. While Edward Libbey developed a custom monogram “L” to stamp on his glassware, I wasn’t able to find documentation of Florence ever having a custom monogram of her own; just as Lipman created her artwork in an attempt to “give back” to Florence and the museum she co-created, I crafted an “FLS” monogram to use in subtle areas of the exhibit, so as to symbolically give a piece of the show’s design in honor of Florence. These elements all influenced the book design.
I knew I wanted to mimic the same “spectral” monogram inclusion with the book’s cover. With the help of a luxe French Paper Co. speckletone cover paper, we embossed the monogram directly over the title–already beautiful on the face, it was especially fun to see the reverse of the emboss on the inside cover (and how it played with the photographic reproduction of Lipman’s artwork).
In addition to a catalogued archive of the process, creation, and installation of ReGift, the publication also contained an extensive essay of Florence’s life and contributions to Toledo through text and archival images, as well as an interview between Lipman and curator Diane Wright. It was a (fun) challenge to weave three distinctly different batches & styles of content together into one book.
