Intentions
The MoMA trustees commissioned William Hall Work to create them a book that would be a fitting record of the sculpture garden’s storied history and cultural significance. William’s intention was to recreate a sense of place in the materiality of the publication, and also to invoke various elements of the garden’s history, both explicit and implicit, through the design treatments employed. The most immediate aspect of the book, when encountered, is its size. It is 40cm wide, with almost 300 pages on 150gsm and 170gsm paper. The monumental format is exactly 1/6 of the size of one paving slab from the garden, bound in a grey that mirrors the marble slabs themselves, emphasised by the book’s weight.
Execution
OGL’s role in this project was working on the cover. On it we invoked MoMA’s Modernist heritage, and rich design collection with its restrained use of Univers superimposed onto a delicate grid, that also reproduces the proportions of the sculpture garden’s paving grid. Many options were considered, including grids at many different sizes, and both orthogonal and perspectival viewpoints. Eventually a solution was was achieved that felt elegant, refined and appropriate.