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Barry McGlashan Between The Dream And Waking Catalogue

Barry McGlashan: Between The Dream And Waking 

Published by The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, 2021 

Texts by Tommy Zyw and Barry McGlashan 

Photography by Stuart Johnstone 

Designed by James Brook 

ISBN 978 1 912900 43 5 

Soft cover | 245 x 190 mm | 80 pages | Printed by J Thomson Colour Printers, Glasgow on Galerie Art Matt  

Barry McGlashan is a painter based in Aberdeen, this is a catalogue that I designed for his exhibition, Between The Dream And Waking, at the Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, from 28 October to 27 November 2021. 

McGlashan studied painting at Grays School of Art, graduating in 1996; in 1998 he returned to Grays where he taught in the drawing and painting department until 2005 when he left teaching to pursue painting full-time. Informed by his knowledge of literature and art history, his wonderful paintings create immersive worlds for the viewer to inhabit that range from the intimate to the monumental.  

The works themselves also vary in size: in the exhibition there are paintings as small as 13 x 12 centimetres and works as large as 170 x 140 centimetres. For the catalogue, I devised a system of scaling that used the most common size of works in the exhibition, 30 x 21.5 centimetres, as a reference point for sizing the images in relation to each other; smaller images were scaled up and larger images were scaled down so that all are at a decent size on the page and no details are lost, but giving a sense of the scale of the works in relation to each other.  

The storytelling in the artist’s work suggested a serif typeface, as traditionally used for text in story books; I used Freight Text Pro, a contemporary serif typeface, throughout the main body of the book with its sans-serif sibling, Freight Sans Pro for the secondary information at the front and back of the book. On the image pages, I used Freight Text Pro in various weights to create a hierarchy of information for the captions; the type was centred in short line lengths, with the caption centred on the page underneath the centred image creating a formal and traditional feel. Page numbers are also centred, giving a consistent baseline for the other elements to sit on. Elsewhere in the book, this centred layout is disrupted with ranged left typography and layouts based on the underlying grid, creating a tension in the design.  

The front cover features a full bleed detail of McGlashan’s painting, The Blue Hour, a small oil painting on canvas of 30 x 26 centimetres that I felt encapsulated the title of the exhibition; the title is set in Freight Text Pro and is centred, giving a taste of the layout inside. On the back cover, I placed a full bleed detail of another small painting, Wake, this time more abstract, which sits well with the cover image, continuing the dreamlike feel and showing some of the diversity of McGlashan’s practice. On the inside covers, I used details from Veil, adding an unexpected decorative element to the book and, at this scale, revealing some of the beautiful brushwork in the painting. 


 

Tommy Zyw, Director, The Scottish Gallery: I have had the pleasure to work on several exhibition catalogues with James Brook. James understands the individual requirements of the artist, gallery and audience. He has an in-depth knowledge of design and printing. This he combines with creative flair and a practical and hardworking approach.  


Joanna Kessel Illumination Cards

Here are some folded cards that I designed for the mosaic artist, Joanna Kessel. There are five card designs in the set, each showing a different work from a fantastic new series of beautiful mosaics called Illumination which ‘explores the simple geometry and inherent beauty of the circle’. The cards are 120mm square and are printed on 300gsm silk card with a matt lamination. Photography is by Alix McIntosh and the text on the back of the card follows the typography of the leaflet that I designed for Joanna in 2019 – click here to see the leaflet.


Oor Mad History Book Cover

This the cover of Oor Mad History, a book I have been designing for CAPS, an independent advocacy organisation which provides collective advocacy to different groups of people across Lothian with mental health issues. The book celebrates the community history of mad activism and collective advocacy in Lothian, 2010-2020, and follows a book celebrating the organisation’s first ten years, published in 2010, which captured people’s memories and stories from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. This new book shares the memories and experiences of people who have been involved in recent years and looks at what has happened in local collective advocacy and activism from 2010. 

For the design of the book, I collaborated with members of the Oor Mad History collective advocacy group, who steered, through a series of consultation meetings, how the book would look and feel. The group took inspiration from book covers they liked, sending me images of covers which I used as a starting point to work up various options for the cover. The initial brief for the cover was to create a celebratory feel, so, based on an idea for the cover by one of the group – a painting that featured bunting – I created a design based on abstracted bunting with a palette of colours sampled from the painting. 

The group felt that the bunting was a little too celebratory for the cover and didn’t reveal the complex issues faced by the group, which are not always positive. The group suggested that an idea of key words and phrases associated with the collective advocacy movement, presented as graffiti on a brick wall, might be more ‘provocative’ and might tie in better with the activist side of collective advocacy and the struggle to have their voices heard. I presented several versions of this idea along with an alternative typographic treatment that created a wall of words – this was the version that the group felt was strongest and we went with this idea for the cover, with the bunting appearing on the inside of the cover and on the title page (below) where the title was accompanied by a sub-title, A celebration of collective advocacy and mad activism in Lothian 2010-2020, to give a context for the bunting.


I am proud to have collaborated on this project and it has been really interesting to learn more about the work of CAPS, the Oor Mad History collective advocacy group, and the struggles faced by people with mental health issues. Feedback for the design has been very positive and I look forward to seeing the finished book. The book is being printed by Gomer in Wales – we have approved proofs and the book is due in mid-December in time for the celebrations to mark CAPS’ 30th anniversary.

Below is the back cover of the book.



You can find out more about CAPS here.


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