Helsinki photography biennial

Concept, typesetting and graphic design.

This catalogue was produced for the Helsinki Photography Biennial. It presents all participating artists according to the exhibition venues. Each artist was given the same amount of space in the catalogue — one spread consisting of two pages.

The catalogue is multilingual, containing texts in Finnish, Swedish and English. Because the publication contains a large amount of text and not all language versions could fit comfortably within the same spreads, I decided to place the Swedish texts together at the end of the book as a separate section. The Finnish and English texts appear side by side throughout the catalogue, while the Finnish texts are highlighted with a freely flowing pale green background shape.

Multilingual publications often present challenges in book design. In general, I prefer to produce separate editions for each language, since readers usually read only one language anyway. When multiple languages appear within the same publication, parts of the book inevitably become irrelevant to individual readers, which is not an ideal situation. However, sometimes compromises have to be made, and exhibition catalogues are, after all, practical publications intended for temporary use.

I wanted this publication to feel approachable and easy to browse, which is why we chose a softcover format. A deep green colour was used as an accent throughout the book.

Client	Union of Artist photographers
Size	Landscape 210 × 245 mm
Content	132 pages
Language	Trilingual: Finnish, English and Swedish
Binding	Sewn binding, soft cover with lamination
Printing	Offset