PROJECT UPDATE
Hot Tomali worked with photographer Philip Jarmain to successfully fund a Kickstarter campaign to produce a larger, coffee table style, art book for American Beauty.
The finished book will be case bound in a textured black cloth, with the option of a cloth wrapped slip cover. Both the cover and slip cover will include a foil stamp of the American Beauty Identity. The 13.5” x 10.5” book will be 132 pages long, printed 4 colour process UV ink throughout. Featuring 58 fine art photographs accompanied by text telling the history of each of these magnificent structures.
American Beauty is a series of large scale architectural, military grade photographs of what was once known as the “Paris of the Midwest”. Since 2010 photographer Philip Jarmain has been documenting the increasingly rapid destruction of Detroitʼs early twentieth-century buildings. His emphasis in this work is on the architecture itself of these vanishing edifices: The form and the detail.
The city of Detroit had an unprecedented impact on the modern world. The architecture of Detroit in the early 1900s rivaled that of New York, Chicago, or Paris. Then came the Great Depression of the 1930s. Though Detroit would rise again, the era of opulence was over. In 2009 a recession hit like a second Great Depression, compounding the decline and ruin. Now the majority of these majestic pre-Depression buildings they lie victim to scrappers, arson, and demolition.
Jarmain approached Hot Tomali to concept the branding, print collateral and website for this photo series, titled American Beauty, and subsequent exhibition. The logotype pays homage to the Detroit Tigers logo, originally created in the early 1900’s, still in use in a more refined way today. This was paired with robust/modern style of typeface to reflect the industry of the region.
Hot Tomali produced a coffee table book to support the exhibition as it moved from city to city throughout North America. The textured cover and blind emboss of the title was inspired by the plaques found on listed buildings, providing a tactile experience. The pages make use of generous amounts of white space, creating tension drawing the viewer to the clean lines of content.
The American Beauty exhibition has gone on to receive critical acclaim from numerous publications and news sources, including Wired, San Francisco Chronicle, CBC, Huffington Post, Daily Mail, Michigan Radio, Vancouver SUN, and Business Insider Australia. The book design itself won gold at the 2015 Lotus Awards.