Design: 8vo, London (1993) — To coincide with Wim Crouwel’s retirement as Director of the Museum Boymans in 1993, the museum’s publicity department organised an exhibition of the catalogues and posters designed by 8vo over a five year period during Crouwel’s tenure. We were asked to design a small catalogue for the exhibition in the format (27 x 22 cm) which was standard for all of the museum’s catalogues. This we were reluctant to do, feeling that the totality of the project was the important thing; to document something of the attitude and the working process would be more appropriate than producing a catalogue raisonné. The aspect of the work for the museum that was key for us, was the way we had approached the design of each catalogue afresh: evolving a new grid for each of the fifty or so catalogues we designed – based on the content, subject matter and information structure of each one. In response to Crouwel’s original brief for flexibility of approach, this was at the core of o...