The Royal Academy of Arts is an independent and privately funded British institution for the promotion of the fine arts. Established in London in 1768, it has been presided over by and included in its ranks, some of Britain’s greatest artists and architects.
The Academy’s 2018–19 annual report is notable for its simple but strict page grid, its use of photography, and deployment of double-page spreads.
The page grid uses a single-column force-justified type block. The type is a nondescript sans serif, a cliched but still-effective way for an institute as old as this one to connote modernity. Text blocks are narrow, allowing the page to breathe. Captions are set ragged-right and appear in either black or cyan. Captions set in cyan funtion as pull-quotes and navigation prompts, allowing the eye to roam around a spread.
The designers use carefully composed photographs to great effect by using them as full-bleed double-page spreads. This report has one of the highest numbers of double-page spreads we’ve seen in recent months. And it’s not simply a case of having many pictures. It’s about the composition of the images themselves. For the most part these are wide-angle images, encompassing spaces within the Academy’s various galleries, as well as the people in them. There is a landscape photographer’s eye at play in the selection of images and it works wonders.
This report makes use of a simple 2-colour palette, a single sans serif and effectively bends photography and design to make something that reflects the Academy’s work.
