Into the Weeds

The broadsheet served as a catalogue for Marlene McCarty’s twinned exhibitions in Buffalo, NY (one part gallery installation of her mural-sized drawings; another a permanent toxic garden based on the drawings). Her work has complex ideas, and so too the broadsheet with an 8,000 word essay as well as an herbal guide to the plants.

Developing ideas collaboratively with Marlene was key to the design. It had to respect the art and writing – and was informed by her ideas on modernism and noxious plants. The typography gradually decays and breaks the rigidity of the grid, a legacy of modernist graphic design. The broadsheet format allows foldout posters of the artworks, and the cover serves as an exhibition checklist. Newsprint can be tricky, but we found a printer who could faithfully reproduce Marlene’s subtle large-scale graphite and pen drawings.