Heavens and the Earth was published to accompany a solo exhibition of the same name by Mexican artist Bosco Sodi, which was held at Blain|Southern in London in 2019. Sodi's works for the exhibition were informed both by the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi and by themes relating to the Book of Genesis.
We looked to some of the earliest examples of book design during our research, reinterpreting details such as the decorative drop-cap and the marginal placement of footnotes throughout. The page structure for the text section was created according to Jan Tschichold’s ‘Golden Canon of Page Construction’.
All type is set in Caslon, which has previously been used within the 1772 King James Bible and the 1853 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. The book’s content is differentiated through the use of contrasting materials: a ridged laid paper for the essay and endpapers, a translucent bible paper for reference images, and a textured matt-coated stock for the images of the works themselves. There are twelve different screen-printed covers, each featuring close crops to encourage a close reading of the works within.
Over the centuries, scholars have studied the pages of early Christian manuscripts to determine the mechanisms through which they were designed. Typographer Jan Tschichold draws together these ideas within his seminal text The Form of the Book, to develop the Golden Canon: a proportional formula used to position content on a page in the most visually harmonious way. We followed the rules of the Golden Canon in our layout of the text pages within the book.
