Rational Beauty

Like many designers, I seek to make work that is visually beautiful, but also has teeth—I want to inspire, provoke, and ideally ignite a conversation, or several. When the intended audience is comprised of one’s own cohorts, the stakes are even higher (and the possibilities arguably more thrilling).

Thus, when Cameron Campbell, founder and curator of a storytelling platform called Patterns + Insights within the Amazon Device and Services Design Group, recruited me as Creative Director to design a publication from scratch, I was curious, intrigued, and maybe slightly daunted. Embarking with a blank template, what did we want to communicate to the company’s design community—and how could we exploit the power of print to compel, shock, and delight readers in a digitally driven age?

Our stated mission was to break the design and art groups out of their respective silos and to investigate how creative work intersects with commerce, politics, and culture. Unbound, the maiden issue, is an oversized, 124-page celebration of female ingenuity, creativity, resourcefulness, and creativity across myriad disciplines, genres, and eras, and was created with a storied team of contributing artists, designers, writers, illustrators, photographers, and printers. We present a layered, tactile reading experience through five distinct paper stocks, nested and bound with an elastic band. A flexible typographic system—set in GT Alpina and GT America—balance clarity, legibility, and contrast across a wide range of content. The resulting publication embodies our experimental and unbridled spirit, while not shying away from playfulness.

From the outset we envisioned the magazine as part of a broader platform that would include workshops, podcasts, conferences, lectures and other collaborations to extend the conversation beyond the printed page. And although Amazon eventually disbanded the team and abandoned the project, we remain proud of this artifact and the remarkable women who are celebrated on its pages.

365: AIGA Year in Design
D&AD Wood Pencil
TDC
TDC Japan