Recently in New York City, a record 483 galleries and artist projects
participated in 11 concurrent art fairs—the Armory show being the
biggest. Dealers at this fair reported increased sales from last year
and were confident the art market had rebounded.
However, the talk of the week was the “Independent,” a brand new
art fair co-founded by New York gallerist Elizabeth Dee and the
London-based Darren Flook held at the former Dia Center for the
Arts building in Chelsea.
Billed as “... part consortium, part collective”, it gathered about 40
international galleries, nonprofit spaces and publications together
under one roof. Each exhibitor had an unbound area to show its
works, rather than the standard walk-in cubicle trade-show style
architecture of most art fairs.
Continue reading: “Independent in the Art World”
Economic downturns are unpredictable and disruptive, but museums still need to develop ambitious exhibits if they are to remain relevant. Mining and reworking the permanent collection will work for a year or two, but ultimately each institution is judged by its ability to present fresh art and ideas to its community.
Continue reading: “Book Fair Idea: Rethinking Publications During Hard Economic Times”
Some museums put the PR department in charge of developing content for the Web. Our staff thinks this may be one reason many museum Web sites don’t inspire them to visit.
Continue reading: “A Simple Way to Make Museum Websites More Attractive to an Important Audience”
Typography as a discipline is generally concerned with very small things. That’s not always true of course — sometimes letters can be big or even monumental. But most of the type we encounter daily is pretty small. In Marquand Books’ particular niche of the typographic world — book typography, and even more specifically art book typography — we’re especially concerned with another kind of small thing: numbers that are smaller than 1 but bigger than 0, expressed as portions of a whole. I.e. fractions.
Continue reading: “It’s the Little Things”
Ed has traveled to some 60 museums in the past few months, meeting with museum professionals across the country. Recently, he spent time talking shop with Ann Carper, an editor of SITES, the Smithsonian Institution’s Traveling Exhibition Service. Marquand is producing a catalog for SITES’s forthcoming exhibition, William H. Johnson: An American Modern. Read more about their conversation here.
At Marquand Books, we are working as hard as our clients to save money and reduce unnecessary cost overruns. This series will feature suggestions on how to help us help you save on book production costs. Check back often.
Today’s Tip: Stick to deadlines. Delays can drive up publishing costs.
Continue reading: “Tips for Controlling Publication Budgets in Tight Times”
by Kim Christiansen, iocolor
When preparing a digital image for use in book production, there are three primary areas of concern that need to be addressed:
Image Resolution
Color Accuracy
Color Space
The number one concern is image resolution. Ideally the image scan/capture should be 400ppi (pixels per inch) at 100% of the final size it will be used in your book. This should be native resolution, since resampling your image in Photoshop to 400ppi won’t add the necessary quality.
The second concern is color accuracy. This hinges on a simple, yet crucial, question: “Does your studio/department employ good color management practices?” Without a color-managed system, your screen and printer will not accurately show what the files actually look like. If you are unfamiliar with the principles of color management, we highly recommend learning more about the process. There are many classes, books, and websites available to help you find more information.
Third, your final images should be in the Adobe RGB color space and not converted to CMYK. If you convert to a generic CMYK color space, it is likely that you will not be getting everything you can out of your images. Let us handle this process. We have the experience, tools, and information necessary to make an optimal CMYK conversion that will bring out the best in your images and, ultimately, your finished book
If you have transparencies or artworks that need to be captured, iocolor can provide scanning and digital image capture services. We can also color manage existing images and print color-accurate match prints for reference. With our many years of experience, we understand the image requirements for the book production process better than a prepress shop more oriented toward advertising. We employ state-of-the-art equipment and industry-leading processes, so your book images will more truly match the originals.
Recently, Shannon Wilkinson of Cultural Communications asked Ed Marquand to offer a few tips on producing art books. Ed touches on how to avoid common pitfalls and offers several ways to develop new content in a feature on the Cultural Communications Web site here.
