 |
 |
|
|
The Toronto-based designer Bruce Mau created a visual identity for Zone that jolted the stable norms of academic publishing and contributed significantly to the publisher's success. Lavishing attention on production details, Mau devised gate-folded covers that add formality to Zone's weighty paperback volumes and give readers the pleasure of unfolding a flap to reveal an image concealed inside. Saturated colors transform dull photographs and engravings into dramatic illustrations, while subtly crafted pages of typography impose their own veil of commentary on the texts.
Mau's design strategies encouraged Zone's editors to publish texts composed in non-academic formats, from timelines and interviews to compilations of deranged dictionary entries. Zone's subject matter traverses such fields as art history, anthropology, literary theory, and psychoanalysis. Working outside the protective umbrella of a university, the editors established Zone as an independent, not-for-profit publishing venture. Zone's image-conscious, interdisciplinary approach reflected the ambitions of a generation of academics who no longer wished to be the guardians of staid and stolid volumes but active, entrepreneurial participants in contemporary life.
|
 |
Zone 4: Fragments for a History of the Human Body |