The guys from FARM roped us in to design the book for the exhibition Between, Beside, Beyond for architect Daniel Libeskind at the Singapore Art Museum. This book would be a coffee table book showcasing his buildings and also featuring the upcoming waterfront housing development project, Reflections at Keppel Bay. FARM and Michael Lee were the curators of the exhibition. One important aspect of the brief was that the book has to not only to compliment the exhibition, but also act as a gift to the prospective owners of the new development.
The main theme that we worked with was “Intervention”. After numerous design meetings with FARM, we all agreed that it was a characteristic of the work of Libeskind. This theme is illustrated in the book and exhibition space through cut-outs. The exhibition panels, made of metal sheets, have text and images of Libeskinds’ work etched on them. The silhouettes of the buildings were cut out of the metal sheets. Similarly, the book has die-cuts as well. The original design intention was to have a die-cut done cleanly through the book, so that the book can be ‘seen’ through. However, due to the image usage constraints, we were unable to carry through with the idea. Seen through the front and the back, the die-cut looks into the middle of the book, which is red. This effect is created as the individual pages itself are made up of ‘french-folds’ (each page is actually a binded spread, with the inner pages in red). Thread-sewn and bound, the book is complete by a white board glued onto the front and back with a die-cut, continuing the ‘see-through’ effect. Text on the white board is hot-stamped in pearl, so that from a distance, the text is almost invisible. Closer inspection and actually touching the cover will reveal the text.
