Influence: Edmond & Corrigan + Peter Corrigan

Translating these presentations into a printed, bound and ‘archive-able’ edition proved a unique challenge. It was also a personal honour to help pay tribute to a designer and studio whose work provided colour and influenced the urban archiscape that my generation grew up surrounded by.

After supplying the editors with three very different approaches we settled on a direction that allowed graphic elements to be informed by motifs contained within the rich variety of drawings, imagery and photographs (many rarely seen) sourced from the RMIT Design Archives and generously supplied by photographer, John Gollings, for the publication.

As an example, graphic tiling on the pillars inside RMIT University Building 8, originally drawn by hand by Corrigan and Edmond’s studio, were digitised and deployed within page gutters to aid readers in navigating between contributors. This mimicked their original purpose of these designs, helping visitors orientate themselves within the physical spaces they were designed for.

A starkly geometric display typeface was developed in parallel with the book that responded to the playful yet rigorously constructed architectural details featured within. The completed design also included illustrative typography by Nina Gibbes [ninamgibbes.work].