Perspectives Issue 4: Language and Culture
Published by Haileybury, 2023
Editor: Toby Parker
Contributors: Gary Wade
Designed by James Brook
210mm x 245mm | 112 pages | Printed by Gomer, Wales on 150 gsm Edixion Offset with 300 gsm machine-sealed soft cover and 150 gsm wraparound jacket with 200mm flaps
This is the fourth issue of Perspectives, a magazine that I have designed from the first issue, creating a flexible but rigourous design and layout that subtly shifts and develops with each issue. The magazine is published by Haileybury School and was initiated from a desire to showcase the school’s heritage, current academic and cultural issues with new research about the school’s collections. Edited by Toby Parker, the Heritage Director and College Archivist at Haileybury, the magazine examines the school’s role in a variety of cultural practices and issues, and to think critically about the way in which it interacts with other cultural institutions locally, nationally and globally.
Perspectives is published several times a year; each issue is themed, with this one titled ‘Language and Culture’. This special issue is the biggest issue to date with 112 pages and breaks away from the magazine format of previous issues – which were based around a series of articles and essays – with most of the publication taken up with the first edition of the Haileybury Lexicon or Haileyburiana Redux. The Lexicon consists of over 1,000 entries relating to vocabulary used between 1862 and 1942 at Haileybury, and demonstrates the complex culture of the School in its first 80 years. Words and phrases, most of them cross-referenced with other entries, offer insights into the social hierarchies, humour, cruelties and the general intricacy of the culture that existed before the mid-twentieth century.
It was an interesting challenge to take the design and layout of the magazine – established in the previous three issues – and push it in a totally different direction. I generated sample layouts and designs that explored how the essence of the design could be kept whilst accommodating a very different type of information than the essays and self-contained articles published in previous issues, refining these ideas in consultation with the editor, Toby Parker, over a period of time. The layout of the Lexicon entries uses the same typeface, Calluna, as in the previous issues but, for the Lexicon, it is used exclusively in its serif version to echo the authority of a dictionary. Individual entries in Lexicon are typeset in different weights and styles of Calluna to establish a hierarchy of information and to assist the reader in understanding the conventions of the cross-referencing system set up by the editor. Once the Lexicon had been typeset and everything was in place, we became aware, as we proofed, corrected and cross-referenced the entries, that the contrast between different types of information needed to be stronger so I refined this hierarchy further.
Alphabetical sections are marked by over-sized letters printed in ‘Lexicon Red’, an additional colour to the four colours originally created for the magazine. This colour was then used throughout the magazine alongside ‘Perspectives Gold’ to create a cohesive design. Initial sample layouts included images within the Lexicon entries but we decided that, in this issue, the text was the most important element so images were kept on separate pages to maintain the integrity of the Lexicon entries. Initial layouts included far more images which were, over several iterations, whittled down to just the very key images – this introduced more white space which offsets the density of the text of the Lexicon and gives the reader a space to breathe whilst also punctuating the entries.
The editor felt that, although the Lexicon is presented within issue 4 of Perspectives, it should also feel self-contained, as a publication in its own right, so, as a solution, I proposed a jacket with flaps in addition to the cover. The design of the jacket follows the design of the previous three covers of Perspectives, maintaining a cohesive and recognisable series. ‘Perspectives Gold’ was used as the key colour for the cover, the fourth colour from the palette of colours I created for the magazine, which sits well with the colours of the cover illustration. With the extra bulk from the 112 pages, we were able to include the title of the magazine on the spine – previous issues were too narrow to include this. The jacket wraps around the actual cover of the magazine which has a design that highlights the Lexicon as a complete publication with the title on the front and on the spine following conventions of traditional book design rather than magazine design. Information such as the editor’s introduction and the colophon are placed on the front flap; when the flap is removed, the magazine immediately feels more like a book with the first page acting as a title page. We imagined that some readers might not remove the jacket but, for those that did, not only is there the slippage between magazine and book but there are a couple of illustrations from the Haileybury archive, hidden on the inside back and front covers, that are revealed only to curious readers. Similarly, the tint of ‘Perspectives Gold’ that is printed on the inside of the jacket, a contrast to the white paper, can only be seen if the jacket is taken off.
The client and myself are really pleased with the design of this issue and I think that, once again, it proves the versatility of my original design and layout of the magazine.
