Royal College of Art

2001 Summer Show catalogue design: Draught Associates; 2001-2002 prospectus design: Vanessa Price

Ex-RCA graduate Michael Lenz, founding partner of Draught Associates, which was responsible for this summer degree show catalogue, says that having been part of the college wasn’t necessarily an advantage. ‘It meant we’d seen the work of the past, but our work is project-based so we approached it uniquely from that perspective.’ The current book is in a compact, user-friendly, B5-size bound format.

‘The catalogue is different, since there is a limit to the level of ostentatiousness [you can put in it]. It’s not a piece of marketing like the prospectus,’ explains RCA publishing manager Will Dallimore. Dallimore commissioned ex-RCA student Vanessa Price to design the prospectus, having worked with her already on the 2000 summer show catalogue. ‘I wanted this year’s prospectus to be “big and bold”,’ says Dallimore. Large spreads of photographs with work from renowned alumni, as well as last year’s students, are in the foreground. ‘I intended the prospectus to have the excitement of editorial design and the navigational intelligence of information design,’ says Price.

Dallimore has already commissioned the photography for next year’s prospectus, which will show work in progress. ‘This is an amazing place,’ says Dallimore. ‘You may have an industrial furnace on one floor, and rows of sewing machines on another. I wanted to put the students’ work at the heart of it, as the RCA is full of talented people looking ahead.’

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