PORTRAIT OF A CITY
With an existing design template, talented photo researchers, editors, and writers, this series might not seem like a career highlight. But the designer’s role at the ‘bottleneck’ of any team is an important one — and as consistently rewarding for me as the challenge of leading a project.
Each ‘portrait’ represented Taschen’s addition to the dwindling, costly, and time-intensive arena of the curated photobook — the kind of ‘evergreen’ storytelling title exemplified in MOMA’s The Family of Man, continuously in print since 1955, with over 4 million copies sold to date.
Designing these books allowed me to flex my ‘Trivial Pursuit’ muscle, that is, to blend curiosity and a general knowledge base to weave together the threads — of popular culture, history, music, cinema, fashion, lifestyle, and architecture — that led me down this creative career path to begin with.
The New York book received the kudos (inset top) from Time. Los Angeles was my first contribution to the series, which was developed by the publisher with the debut, Berlin.
The series’ goals were ambitious: make the ultimate book on a city — for gifting, and interesting to natives, armchair tourists, pop historians, and photo enthusiasts alike.
Beginning with the first known photo, through to a brief survey of modern photography, each book attempted to tell a single story, surrounding photos and captions with:
– Brief illustrated essays detailing each ‘era’ including images and ephemera from major events within the period.
– Juxtaposed historic documents, adding a bit of depth and context to key moments, cultural movements and events which impacted life in the city, and beyond.
– Capsule bios of the photographers, a who’s-who, from world-famous to anonymous.
– Recommended ‘Top 5Os,’ including brief summaries of important movies, books, and music, for the reader who wants to experience the city on a deeper level.
Beginning with the first known photo, through to a brief survey of modern photography, each book attempted to tell a single story, surrounding photos and captions with:
– Brief illustrated essays detailing each ‘era’ including images and ephemera from major events within the period.
– Juxtaposed historic documents, adding a bit of depth and context to key moments, cultural movements and events which impacted life in the city, and beyond.
– Capsule bios of the photographers, a who’s-who, from world-famous to anonymous.
– Recommended ‘Top 5Os,’ including brief summaries of important movies, books, and music, for the reader who wants to experience the city on a deeper level.
With built-in lasting appeal, the Portrait of a City series was ideal to repackage — from the digest-size ‘piccolo’ format perfect for countertop impulse placement, to experimenting with new formats like the compact editions at right, featuring a cover illustration printed on cloth, and using the partial jacket to advertise the contents.
These were also perpetually spun-off into the traditional range of publishers’ non-books — with all manner of calendars, notebooks and portfolios until (RIP) the digital revolution rendered them at least commercially obsolete.