Sculpture Today

Phaidon — BookTypeface
Artwork from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today

Three dimensional quality of sculptures
led to the idea of three-dimensional typography.

I thought I would have a go
at creating my own sculptures, using a familiar material, paper.

Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today

‘Paper Alphabet’ is constructed by cutting and folding a single sheet of paper.

Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread detail from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread detail from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Interior spread from Sculpture Today
Sylvie Fleury, Prada Shoes, 1998
PhaidonInfo

Sculpture Today

Sculpture Today

BookTypeface

Sculpture Today offers a richly illustrated and authoritative overview of sculpture during the past fifty years. Following Phaidon’s best-selling volumes Art Today and Architecture Today, it is an authoritative yet accessible publication exploring the various subjects, materials and styles used by sculptors and offers a fascinating insight into this wide-ranging art form.

The book discusses work by more than 300 sculptors over 50 years. The design challenge was to create a book that celebrated the individuality of each artist’s work while maintaining its own voice and personality. To avoid showcasing a specific artist on the cover, we created our own sculpture — a three-dimensional paper alphabet, which we made by hand and which was photographed by Edward Park. The letters vary in width and height, making each glyph unique.

The book layout showcases large images of the works, with the accompanying text split up into bite-size portions to allow browsing through it. The main text is typeset in Norm’s Simple, which adds a light texture to the page. The chapter openers make use of the paper alphabet, while the end-matter makes good use of the left overs from the letter-making process; in the index, paper letters are scattered on a page amongst digital type.

Publisher: Phaidon
Author: Judith Collins

2007