Border Crossings Magazine
Latest Issue
Issue No.
125
PHOTOGRAPHY
Mar, 2013
Cover:
Robert Frank
Patti Smith
John Massey
Black Star Photo Agency
John Cage
Robert Longo's "CHARCOAL" Shortlisted for "Best German Book Design" Award
Jun 29, 2012
According to Longo’s website:
Both the first- and second-round juries were in agreement when it came to this art book: Robert Longo’s charcoal drawings are in harmony with the overall design, perfectly presented in terms of material, production, color, typeface, and layout. The black cloth back with glossy black stamped lettering; the strong, uncoated gray cardboard with the artist’s name and title of the book in narrow, bold, and equally black Grotesque typeface; the black endpapers with a three-sided black-edging (or line-woodcut) on top set the mood for chiaroscuro—the game with light and shadow that Longo masterfully plays in his drawings. Austere, balanced, strong, yet delicate typography—positive emotional dramaturgy on these pages! The soft, natural paper, pleasant to the touch, demands the highest degree of precision from the lithographer and printer, so that the charcoal drawings, parts of which are very dark, do not fill in. Here, too, the ultimate has been achieved: coordinating the technical reproduction to reflect the qualities of the original works of art.
To read more about Longo and his creative process, check out Issue No. 115 for an in-depth interview.
