A Guide to Making Art Publications

Online course by Node Center for Curatorial Studies with Priscila Clementti

Duration: Jan 11 – Feb 8, 2023
Fee: 179€
Max seats: 32
Enroll before: Jan 7, 2023
Live sessions: 2 hrs/week

Get 20% off if you enroll throughout December!

Discount code: twentythree

Art publications are essential for the posterity of exhibitions and art projects – sometimes they are the medium of the project itself. Whether a complement to an exhibition or a stand-alone form, art books are rich formats for curators and artists to work with.

This course will take you through the steps of publishing an art book from a creative perspective as well as an organizational one. From the creative side, we will experiment with the concept and form of the publication by learning from innovative examples and by discovering the potential of materials and techniques used to make a book. From the organizational aspect, this course will teach you how to manage budgets, contracts, permissions, and how to work with designers, distributors and other stakeholders.

With step-by-step guidance and through a series of inspiring examples and exercises you will be able to organize, structure and develop your own publication project.

Please note that this course does not teach InDesign or other graphic design programs but gives you the tools to work with designers, develop the creative concept and oversee production.

Program

Week 1. Presentation

• Introduction to the program and course overview.

This is a one-hour-only welcome session. The lecturer will introduce the program and participants will introduce themselves. No prior preparation is necessary.

Week 2. Getting started

• Brief introduction to the editorial design process (who’s my team?)
• Publication formats
• Print vs digital publishing
• From concept to materialization
• Exercise: Imagine and define my publication

Week 3. About content

• Publication structure and developing content
• Content production:
• Texts and images commission
• Text and images rights
• Proofreading – a key for success
• Exercise: What is in my publication? Define publication index and partners/team

Week 4. About production

• What about design: Printing/binding/finishing techniques
• Defining production for an estimated budget
• How to create a “briefing” for designers
• Exercise: Create a design briefing and estimated production budget (content & design)

Week 5. Final steps & distribution: last but no least

• About book & publication distribution
• Pricing
• Final thoughts & doubts