Our third book as authors and designers, published with Rockport Publishers, is Graphic Design, Referenced: A Visual Guide to the Language, Applications, and History of Graphic Design, a 400-page visual and informational guide to the most commonly referenced terms, historical moments, landmark projects, and influential practitioners in the field of graphic design.

As we note in our introduction, this is one of the most difficult projects we have developed to date — due, mostly, to the 2,000 images we gathered and the 115,000-plus words we wrote. Putting them together, across 400 pages, was perhaps the most relaxing aspect of it all. We established a (seemingly) simple layout through a comprehensive grid with three strong horizontal blocks where we could accommodate all the content cohesively but still maintain a sense of surprise in a few of the spreads.

The book is typeset in Hoefler & Frere-Jones Mercury type family that, in its infinite readability, allowed us to fit more information per page. As the display typeface we worked with Christian Schwartz’s voluminous Stag Sans. We first sliced Stag Sans ourselves as a stencil title treatment for the cover and Christian then developed an all-uppercase alphabet to use throughout the book in special instances.

A one-page, promotional web site is available for more information about this book. Photographic details below and flat spreads underneath.