Praline creates Digital Revolution catalogue for the Barbican

The exhibition explores the impact of digital technologies on design, visual art, music and film; and Praline’s catalogue design aims to ‘reflect the interactive and revolutionary nature of the exhibition’, according to the consultancy.

Praline has previously worked with the Barbican on the design of the exhibition graphics and the catalogue for Designing 007: Fifty years of Bond Style. It was appointed to the Digital Revolution project on the strength of this work in November last year.

The catalogue is printed in a limited run of 3000 copies, each with a uniquely printed digital cover. Cover images alternate between five different images and each is numbered and marked with the location, as the show will travel after its tenure at the Barbican.

Praline creative director David Tanguy says, ‘We were looking at different ways of producing a catalogue that would communicate what Digital Revolution was about, and thinking about what digital printing can bring to the world of book design and publishing.’

He adds that the project was  ‘very inspired
 by the history of digital typography’, and the book further references the digital world through translating the title into the main programming languages on the inside of the four pages cover.

‘It uses the language of coding without being too clichéd’, he says.

‘We wanted to let [the designs] flow a bit from that digital coding, on-screen feel with the book but inside it lets the work speak for itself. There’s a lot of diverse visuals so it has to be quite free, but something quite dynamic. The book layout changes a lot’.

The cover is pearlescent with a gloss laminate, and the book is printed in a smaller format around the size of an iPad, according to Tanguy.