Folkestone Triennial 2025 Catalogue

How Lies the Land? Folkestone Triennial 2025

Designed by James Brook

Edited by Sorcha Carey

Copyediting by Sophie Haydock

Installation photography by Thierry Bal

Cover illustration by Tangent Graphic, Glasgow

Inside cover: Details from J Maizlish Mole, Folkestone in Ruins, 2025

Published by Creative Folkestone, 2025

ISBN: 978 1 0369 2500 0

Soft cover  | 245 x 210 mm | 128 pages | Printed by Gomer Print, Wales, on 150 gsm Horizon Offset with cover printed on 300 gsm Horizon Offset

This is a catalogue that I designed for How Lies the Land? Folkestone Triennial 2025, one of the UK’s leading exhibitions of contemporary art in public space. Every three years, artists from around the world are invited to make new work that responds to the town – its coastal landscapes, its stories and the people who live there. The 2025 edition of the Triennial was curated by Sorcha Carey and I worked closely with her on this accompanying publication. How Lies the Land? invited eighteen artists to respond to the layers and contours of Folkestone, finding in the deep ground an imaginative space to explore themes including migration and climate change, creation of community, interdependency of species, and the ancestral memories as well as future possibilities contained within the land.

Tangent Graphic in Glasgow designed the visual identity for the Triennial; it features a series of generative images that were developed in Adobe After Effects in a palette of six colours. When I started work on the catalogue, Tangent’s identity was already being rolled out, so I suggested that we use one of these images on the cover of the catalogue to visually connect the publication with the other materials that Tangent were producing – posters, leaflets, social media, marketing and interpretation materials. I selected an image that could wrap around the cover, front to back, that created a dynamic composition within the rectangle of the front cover, and that included all six colours from the palette of the visual identity. 

I developed several typographic solutions for the title that made a nod to the typography of Tangent’s identity but which also stood independently from it. Sorcha and the team at Creative Folkestone were keen that the publication should be able to stand alone, as well as sitting within the identity – marking a difference between printed material that was given away, and a catalogue that was sold and would became a lasting legacy after the Triennial was over. 

I used two typefaces, Clarendon Text Pro and Founders Grotesk, to generate a typographic arrangement of the title for the cover which was then developed and used for the typography throughout the book. The two typefaces work together well as they both have a slightly quirky archaic feel, evident in certain letterforms that visually connect the two typefaces. The obvious contrasts between the slab serif Clarendon Text Pro and sans-serif Founders Grotesk allowed lots of flexibility for setting different types of information and creating hierarchies of information. Clarendon Text Pro was used for titles, captions and headers while the sans-serif Founders Grotesk was used for most of the body text which gave a contemporary feel to the publication while still keeping a traditional look which I felt suited the sense of history and connection to stories rooted in the land within the artists’ work. 

There are eighteen commissioned artists in the Triennial: we decided that each artist should have four pages dedicated to their work including their written proposal for the Triennial alongside contextual images and – where possible – images of their work in situ in Folkestone. Each of the sections were developed in collaboration with the curator and the individual artists (and sometimes their galleries) so each section became quite different, a reflection of each artist’s practice. 

Copies of the catalogue were needed for the press and VIP launches ahead of the public opening of the Triennial, so we were working to a very tight print deadline and it became obvious that not all of the work could be documented as it would not be completed until just before the opening of the Triennial. For the artists where we expected documentation to be available, I added image holders of grey squares before sending the artwork to the printer for proofs. The installation photography was done by Thierry Bal and it was useful to show him the layouts and discuss with him what image formats would work within the layout. Final installation images, were available, were added at the very latest deadline for print.

Alongside the artist pages there is an essay, How Lies the Land? written by Sorcha Carey that introduces the artists and explains the thinking behind her curation of the Triennial. The essay is illustrated with contextualising images of the artists’ work and further installation and location images. Other sections include a preface by the CEO of Creative Folkestone; artist biography pages; project credits and acknowledgements; information about Creative Folkestone and the history of the Triennial; curator thanks; and a funders and supporters page with logos. All these pages required a different layout and typographic treatment with the combination of Clarendon Text Pro and Founders Grotesk working well together to create clear and understandable hierarchies of information to enable the reader to navigate these pages.

The cover was originally going to include flaps that would, as in previous Triennial catalogues, fold out to reveal a map of Folkestone showing the location of the projects and commissions. I suggested that this map might be more practical and user-friendly included in the free guide to the Triennial rather than in the catalogue, so the flaps were removed from the cover and we included a different map – one of J Maizlish Moles’s hand-drawn maps from his Folkestone in Ruins project – printed on the inside cover.  

The publication was printed by Gomer in Wales on 150gsm Horizon Offset with Horizon Offset 300gsm for the cover. Horizon is my favourite paper at the moment – not only does it take ink well, retaining detail and colour, it feels good to the touch and also, when it is bound as a book, it opens well without the resistance of some papers. 

How Lies the land? Folkestone Triennial 2025 opened on Saturday 19 July and runs until Sunday 19 October. Further information can be found here: creativefolkestone.org.uk

Work in Progress with Folkestone Triennial

I have been designing a catalogue for the Folkestone Triennial 2025, one of the UK’s leading exhibitions of contemporary art in public space. Curated by Sorcha Carey, How Lies the Land? invites eighteen artists to respond to the layers and contours of Folkestone, finding in the deep ground an imaginative space to explore themes including migration and climate change, creation of community, interdependency of species, and the ancestral memories as well as future possibilities contained within the land.

The cover of the catalogue is based on an image produced by Tangent Graphic in Glasgow as part of their visual identity for the Triennial – which will appear on posters, leaflets, social media, marketing and interpretation materials (see below). I developed several typographic solutions for the title that made a nod to the typography of Tangent’s identity but which also stood independently from it. I used two typefaces, Clarendon Text Pro and Founders Grotesk, to generate a typographic arrangement of the title for the cover which was then developed and used for the typography throughout the book. 

How Lies the land? Folkestone Triennial 2025 opens on Saturday 19 July and runs until Sunday 19 October. Further information can be found here: creativefolkestone.org.uk

Cover of Meeting Point Within the Lewisian

This is the cover of a publication that I have designed with sculptor Jake Harvey and book artist Helen Douglas for their exhibition, Meeting Point Within the Lewisian, at the Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre in Lochmaddy, North Uist. The exhibition opens on 19 July 2025 and continues until 27 September; it will then tour to various venues including the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. 

The cover is foil blocked with Foilco 612 Metro Grey on Wicotex Brillianta BRI4003 Light Grey fabric with grey head and tail bands. The book was printed and bound by Gomer in Wales who have taken great care and attention with the printing and finishing. 

 Find out more about the exhibition here.

Cover of Genevieve Draper: Slow painting

Here is the cover of Slow painting, a publication that I designed for the artist Genevieve Draper, with photography by Antonia Reeve, and essays by Penelope Curtis and Erlend Clouston. The book is published to coincide with the artist’s exhibition at the Scottish Arts Club, Edinburgh, 3 July to 2 August 2025. The soft cover book has been beautifully printed by Gomer, Wales.

www.genevievedraper.com

Work in Progress with Jake Harvey and Helen Douglas

I have been working with sculptor Jake Harvey and book artist Helen Douglas on a publication for their exhibition which opens on 19 July at the Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre in Lochmaddy, North Uist. The exhibition will then tour to various venues including the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. 

Meeting Point Within the Lewisian is inspired by the travels and work of Dr James Hutton (1726–1797), widely acknowledged as the founder of modern geology, and has led the artists to Uist to experience the Lewisian gneiss complex, the planet’s oldest rock. The publication includes sculptures, book works and photographs that take the stone and coastal landscape of the Western Isles as a starting point, alongside texts by Murdo Macdonald, Alan McKirdy, Juliet Kinchin, Joel Fisher and Beth Williamson. 

It has been really interesting working on the book with these artists, who are both highly experienced in publishing: after I had finalised a layout and grid for the book, the artists went away and created an actual size paper mock-up of the book pages using images printed to scale alongside print-outs of the essays and texts which I had typeset. From this guide, I then developed the layout of each page in InDesign, following the placement given by the artists, but making subtle changes and interventions to sit within the original layout and grid, and to accommodate page numbers, captions etc. After further refinements and adjustments with the artists, the book was sent to the printer for printed proofs along with two A0 colour callibrated scatter proofs on which I managed to squeeze almost all of the images in the book. 

It was wonderful to see a complete printout proof of the book: I love this journey of a book when something that has existed on screen starts to take on more of physical presence – though this book also had an earlier physical life as a full-size rough mock-up, held together with glue and tape. It was especially useful to have the calibrated scatter proofs as they revealed that some of the images were much darker than they appeared on screen. After making some adjustments to colour, brightness and contrast, we signed off proofs of the book and are currently waiting for running sheets to come back from the printers, Gomer in Wales.

The cover will be foil blocked in Foilco 612 Metro Grey on Wicotex Brillianta BRI4003 Light Grey fabric with printed grey endpapers – the cover template, with position of foil blocking on the front and spine is shown below. Gomer are currently preparing samples to test the blocking – we have specified a deep impression on the blocking so it will be interesting to see how that works – a physical process that can’t be predicted digitally!

Invisible Design

Invisible Design (or Some Jobs are Bigger than Others)

Not every job that I work on has a final output that I can claim creative ownership of – I often work on small jobs where my creative contribution is not immediately apparent and the design decisions that I have made are not immediately visible. This small logo that I designed for DES Talks, Susanna Beaumont’s new design podcast as part of her brilliant ongoing project, Design Exhibition Scotland, is a case in point. As an adaptation of an existing design, a designer would not expect to be credited for their work but, in this post, I hope to reveal the sometimes invisible design processes, thinking and decision making that go in to all design jobs, even the smallest, most humble ones.

The brief was to create a new online logo for the DES Talks podcast, adapting the existing DES logo, and working within a square format of 3000 x 3000 pixels with a maximum file size of 512KB using the orange of the original logo as the key colour.

I developed multiple iterations before arriving at a final design: working with the existing DES logo and colour, I tested several layouts with different settings for ‘DES Talks’ – in upper case, lower case, title case and other variations. Each iteration created a different relationship between the existing logo and the additional words but I was drawn to the connection that happens between the uppercase letters of ‘Design Exhibition Scotland’ and the abbreviation ‘DES’ when it is also set in uppercase – it makes sense of the acronym. This connection is emphasised when the word ‘talks’ is set either in lower case or in title case. I was undecided between these two settings but the client opted for ‘Talks’, which I think settles the meaning of the word as ‘(a series of) talks’ rather than ‘Des speaks’ (though that ambiguity is fun).  

In most of the iterations that I designed, the Design Exhibition Scotland logo is positioned on the left-hand side and runs from the top edge of the square: I found that the logo didn’t feel right – too arbitrary and ‘floating’ – when placed elsewhere. It’s always a challenge working with logos designed by other designers and it’s generally a case of finding the ‘sweet spot’ where the logo feels rooted in the layout (this becomes even more of a challenge when working with multiple logos designed by multiple designers – but that’s another story). In the final design, the letters ‘DES’ are aligned with the bottom edge of the DES logo, further emphasising the connection between ‘Design Exhibition Scotland’ and its acronym.

I’m not sure exactly what typeface the logo was originally designed with as I was given a vector, with outlined letters to work with – it looks to me like the typeface was condensed and angled to create an italic. After looking at lots of similar sans-serif geometric typefaces, I selected Futura as the typeface to sit alongside the DES logo. On closer inspection, the vectors included some stray elements that suggested that the original logo had an inline element – I had to tidy these up and remove them as, when outputted as a PNG, it showed as tiny cracks on the letters, despite the outputs being very small in size. I would have liked to refine the letter spacing of the original logo but as it is already established and widely in use, I thought it best to leave it alone.

The logo was designed with two colourways: with an orange background with white lettering and with a white background with orange lettering. It’s clear that in the two examples of the logo in use online, shown below, that the orange background version is the strongest, particularly on the desktop version of Apple’s podcast browser which has a white background that contrasts nicely with the orange logo.

As a further development, I introduced gradient backgrounds, using the shift from white to orange with contrasting coloured elements to create movement, depth and visual interest in the design. I felt that this was something that I might explore further but, in the second round of presentations to Susanna, she decided that the flat background was more suitable and I made that version ready for use. Given that the logo will be usually viewed on a small scale and not always at the optimum resolution I think this was the right decision for maximum legibility.

The DES Talks podcast can be found on various platforms including Apple Podcasts – or by searching for ‘DES Talks podcast’. www.designexhibitionscotland.co.uk

Work in Progress with Genevieve Draper

Work in progress with the artist Genevieve Draper on her publication, Slow painting, to be published to coincide with her exhibition at the Scottish Arts Club, Edinburgh in July 2025. This is the first time that the artist has made a publication so I have been working very closely with her, guiding her through the various stages of making a book. Originally titled Genevieve Draper: A Retrospective, the title has changed several times to become Genevieve Draper: Slow painting, to reference the artist’s identity as a Slow artist and her carefully considered approach to painting. It has been a pleasure working on this book with Genevieve, not least because of the many interesting conversations that we have had about painting, art school education, and maintaining an art practice. The book is currently being printed by Gomer in Wales and I look forward to seeing the finished book which includes photography by Antonia Reeve, and essays by Penelope Curtis and Erlend Clouston.

www.genevievedraper.com