"In Dialogue" is the second, limited edition publication of its kind produced by Pratt Institute's Graduate Communications and Package Design Department. The book provides an alternative to the typical design school catalog; more student-oriented, more personal, and therefore more indicative of the GradComD environment and experience.
Dialogue is central to a GradComD student's education and thus it is the central concept around which this publication was constructed. The book contains conversations between current students, interviews with faculty, and longer roundtable discussions with a variety of people affiliated with our department. We wanted to create a book that reflects how — as designers — we are constantly engaged in multiple dialogues with ourselves, our community, and our work. We do not work alone, but are constantly influenced by our experiences, collaborators, classmates, and audiences. The concept of dialogue is not restricted to words; we investigated the relationship of visual elements, a dialogue between forms, and the more conceptual dialogue between design theory and practice.
This book was designed and developed by current Pratt Graduate Communications & Package Design students led by one of its faculty members. The book team collaborated on all aspects of this publication, from developing the conceptual framework to creating visual and editorial raw materials, design, conducting and transcribing interviews, editing, and original photography.
One of our main goals was to create a non-traditional view book or catalog that promotes the Pratt department through a portrayal based primarily on actual transcribed conversations, imagery, and other raw materials culled from student interchanges and roundtable discussions between students, faculty, and alumni.
The book structure itself reflects the idea of a dialogue or conversation, and evolves from "Greetings" and "Introductions" to the last "Transitions" section that would take a prospective applicant to potentially entering the program.
The book team set up 2 different "Roundtable" discussion sessions where a handful of students, faculty and alumni met to discuss various issues around design practice and our profession.
The book itself reflects dialogue visually in "visual dialogue pages" of visual juxtapositions, overhead process images of people collaborating, a turning of the book orientation to read and experience the "Roundtable's," and a gradient that spans the entire breadth of the book from front to back, and that organizes the sequence in terms of color.
inviting and successful