The Best of the Best of Brochure Design
September 18th 2010 01:48
Original Creative Writing:
David Jobling
Link: www.rockpub.com/
The Best of the Best of Brochure Design
2010 Edition
Jason Godfrey
ISBN 9781592536290
Publisher: Rockport Publishers
Hardback: 352 pages
Pub Date: Jul 2010
US$40.00
Rockport's Best of Brochure Design published 2010. At it's debut this series was a worldwide bestseller, so far so good. This is the second volume. It provides you with the opportunity to open the pages for a best of the best exhibition of brochures from designers and design firms from around the world. The quality of work represented here is considered the highest. Names of the crews who put the work together appear with each of the many pictures of their works so you can source the creative teams.
Although it comes down to taste, what an individual likes or dislikes, in the end, there are several important elements at play in the creation of a good brochure.
What are you saying about the information contained by the way it looks? How is it to be approached?
What can it offer someone who knows nothing about the service it is providing information about?
Does it have sufficient information?
What is it saying about the company it represents?
In the case of Annual Reports, some of the material is relatively standard and staple fare such as the Transtel Engineering report or the mildly off-beat concept package created for Amwest Insurance Group Inc.
This latter package reminded me of one of the last great media kits that came out with a film. It was the Ridley Scott Directed Hannibal. The media kit for Hannibal was a grey foolscap folder with coffee stains on it, and all types of clippings paper-clipped to it, x-rays, photographs, notes.
The contents were quite ghastly, but very fascinating to go through. Obviously insurance is not an operatic thriller, and an Annual Report is not attempting to create a block buster.
The look of the whole is however, the thing. In the chapter that reflects Product and Service brochures there are some beautiful examples of design shifting into the area of art. I think the employment of art and elements of balance to create a beautiful object, surreal as it may be (in the way advertising tends to be about the mundane) in a heightened environment, repeats and repeats in advertising.
"I have a friend with some lovely... shoes," someone once said in the BBC sit-com Absolutely Fabulous written by Jennifer Saunders.
Here we have some shoes growing out of a bursting grape-vine and springing out of corn stalks, in this series of wonderful images from Tycoon Graphics, shot by Shoji Uchida for Abahouse International Co. Ltd the surrealism works beautifully to my tastes.
Over-all the colour palate in the 2010 edition is quite modest, with warmer tones dominating but many subdued and grey tones used to great effect. There are lavish uses of colour here and there, but overall I would say the general colour palate is quite austere.
Photography is certainly a major element in brochure design, and there are examples here that really engage. Rose The flower cabinet exhibition catalogue has some truly sumptuous images, and I love Hat Trick Design's use of imagery in their self-promotional brochure.
The bottom line is this, Rockport's Best of Brochure Design continues to provide a great resource and field of richly inspirational works to appreciate and learn from.
2010 Edition
Jason Godfrey
ISBN 9781592536290
Publisher: Rockport Publishers
Hardback: 352 pages
Pub Date: Jul 2010
US$40.00
Rockport's Best of Brochure Design published 2010. At it's debut this series was a worldwide bestseller, so far so good. This is the second volume. It provides you with the opportunity to open the pages for a best of the best exhibition of brochures from designers and design firms from around the world. The quality of work represented here is considered the highest. Names of the crews who put the work together appear with each of the many pictures of their works so you can source the creative teams.
Although it comes down to taste, what an individual likes or dislikes, in the end, there are several important elements at play in the creation of a good brochure.
What are you saying about the information contained by the way it looks? How is it to be approached?
What can it offer someone who knows nothing about the service it is providing information about?
Does it have sufficient information?
What is it saying about the company it represents?
In the case of Annual Reports, some of the material is relatively standard and staple fare such as the Transtel Engineering report or the mildly off-beat concept package created for Amwest Insurance Group Inc.
This latter package reminded me of one of the last great media kits that came out with a film. It was the Ridley Scott Directed Hannibal. The media kit for Hannibal was a grey foolscap folder with coffee stains on it, and all types of clippings paper-clipped to it, x-rays, photographs, notes.
The contents were quite ghastly, but very fascinating to go through. Obviously insurance is not an operatic thriller, and an Annual Report is not attempting to create a block buster.
The look of the whole is however, the thing. In the chapter that reflects Product and Service brochures there are some beautiful examples of design shifting into the area of art. I think the employment of art and elements of balance to create a beautiful object, surreal as it may be (in the way advertising tends to be about the mundane) in a heightened environment, repeats and repeats in advertising.
"I have a friend with some lovely... shoes," someone once said in the BBC sit-com Absolutely Fabulous written by Jennifer Saunders.
Over-all the colour palate in the 2010 edition is quite modest, with warmer tones dominating but many subdued and grey tones used to great effect. There are lavish uses of colour here and there, but overall I would say the general colour palate is quite austere.
Photography is certainly a major element in brochure design, and there are examples here that really engage. Rose The flower cabinet exhibition catalogue has some truly sumptuous images, and I love Hat Trick Design's use of imagery in their self-promotional brochure.
The bottom line is this, Rockport's Best of Brochure Design continues to provide a great resource and field of richly inspirational works to appreciate and learn from.
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