Hand Drawn Action Packed
Hayward Touring, 2018
St Albans, Wolverhampton, Glasgow & Swansea
Exhibition identity and catalogue for Hand Drawn Action Packed.
Hand Drawn Action Packed, curated by Roger Malbert, exhibited the work of 10 international artists whose practice springs from drawing and reveals the medium’s infinite possibilities for narrative invention.
The catalogue considered the book as a compilation, or anthology, of short stories. The typeface, an adapted form of Bookman Old Style, was developed from an old children’s storybook. The cover aimed to represent each individual artist within the context of a whole, and so a college treatment was created, which included an aspect from each artists’ work.
The sequential nature of narration and storytelling was articulated in the design, which highlighted the progression of time through subtle colour shifts between sections and playing with the position of page numbers, which moved across the pages of the book as you flicked from beginning to end. Aiming to retain the sense of energy and immediacy found in drawing and zine-like dissemination, the catalogue used low-fi production, comprising loose leaves of recycled paper were simply held together with an elastic band.