Out of
the Blue

Out of the Blue is the first of a series of three exhibition-and-workshop events put on by the Contemporary Austin Jones Center. The show featured contemporary cyanotype artworks by artists who specialize in other mediums. As a part of the show attendees are offered a workshopping opportunity to create their own cyanotypes—instructed by the artists themselves. The publications serves a triple purpose: as an exhibition catalogue, a manual of cyanotyping, and an in-bound set of ready-to-use cyanotype paper.

Ulm Grotesk | title, section headers

This geometric typeface was chosen as a display face. Designed by Ilya Naumoff for the Indian Type Foundry, Ulm is meant to imitate the round and industrial essence of the hose-clamp binding—a choice made to call back to the more modulated and calculated approach that cyanotyping requires.

Adobe Garamond | body copy

Designed by Robert Slimbach for Adobe Systems, Adobe Garamond was chosen to serve as main body-text in this publication to reference the era when cyanotypes were used early on as a precursor to what we know as modern photography, which was a time close to when the initial version of Garamond was designed by Claude Garamond.

Kettler, designed by Eric Olson for the Process Foundry, was selected for its contrasting modern angular curves and monospaced uses for specifications and less-colorful language. The typeface features segmented letterforms with rounded edges, leading to an interesting aesthetic that I felt mimicked the essence of cyanotyping as an art form.

Out of the Blue as a set is bound in by a unique binding method I call clamp-binding. Holes are punched through the catalogue as well as through the panels of exhibition works. The clamps not only provide a binding element, but also reference the industrial and more segmented processes that come with cyanotyping.