Oak Knoll Antiquarian Book Catalogue
June 20th, 2006I recently submitted a re-design for Oak Knoll’s Antiquarian Catalogue. Oak Knoll is “the world’s largest inventory of books about books and bibliography,” with a hefty share of titles concerning typography and book design.
I used Robert Slimbach’s Minion Pro Condensed with its proportional (”Old Style”) figures, widely spaced small caps for book titles, and a very readable italic for book descriptions:
The page proportion is a standard 2:3 (a perfect fifth, according to Robert Bringhurst’s “Page Proportions As Musical Intervals”) and I designed a harmonic text block proportion of 3:5 (Bringhurst’s major sixth) with margin proportions 1:2 (the octave):
Not a winning design, but an enjoyable exercise and a chance to dig deeply into a treasure-filled catalogue for bibliophiles.