After exploring body movement for 80 years (ballet, flamenco, mime and modern dance), a leading Puerto Rican theater figure thought it fit—as her swan song—to collect her memorabilia in a publication, including artwork, set and costume designs, photos (portraits, live action), original programs, posters and press clippings. Widely admired, Gilda Navarra was a muse to many artists in America and Europe, as evidenced by myriad texts and images.

Music played an important role in Ms. Navarra’s signature pieces, usually developed for silent characters. The book was thus conceived as a musical piece itself. Its design is based on an ever­present pentagram, often evident, at times suggested or just implied. Because music provides graphic representations of silence—lacking in conventional language—these symbols become metaphors for different “times” in the artist’s ever­changing, transcendental oeuvre. On the cover, a fermata, the notation for a note that is sustained for longer than its note value, hints that Gilda (hence the capital G illustrated in her embroidery style) manipulated music, theater and time in an idiosyncratic way. The white­on­white­on­white treatment further explores the expression of silence, but on purely graphic terms.

AIGA 50 BOOKS / 50 COVERS 2007 SELECTION

Puerto Rico, in it’s short 516 year-old political history, has been under the sponsorship of two different parent countries. Such a diverse context equipped the island with a rich and detailed history of its construction sector, particularly in techniques, practices and ways of building.

This publication chronologically documents this record through a balanced presentation of research and a dense photographic archive, some of it unpublished before. The book jacket, a touch-point with potential readers, hints at the never ending nature of the topic through visual cues about the completion of the illustrated work-in-progress. A book of this size, both in pages and dimensions, called for a layout where readers could read, learn, reflect, enjoy, share, or just use as quick reference. Image captions, traditionally attached in proximity to the content they represent, here portray a narrative of their own, not only complementing the visual, but also providing a secondary text that can be read in conjunction with the rest of the composition or in an independent manner.

BOOK CREDITS _ Historical Investigation and Content Guillermo A. Baralt Editing Matilde Albert Robatto Design and Concept Alberto Rigau, estudio interlínea Layout Production Assistant Alfonso Gómez Arzola Typography Auto, designed by Akiem Helmling, Bas Jacobs y Sami Kortemäki of Underwear Cover Rendering Eduardo Miranda Printing RR Donnelley of Puerto Rico Printing Rep Luis González

PRINTING SPECS _ Print Run 3,000 Color 4/4 Paper Local matte, 157 grams Binding Hard-Cover Smythe Sewn

Concerned with how readers often fail to acknowledge and ultimately disregard the relevance of student ideas, reducing them to image-making, an Architecture School’s Dean struggled to find the best way to showcase such work.

The School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico decided to celebrate its 10th anniversary by publishing and exhibiting the most important student work made so far. As structure for the publication, it was decided to present the projects in question format, underlining the importance of inquiry over image. One hundred entries (grouped and coded by theme) predetermined the book’s format and that of the exhibit. Elegance (it is about architecture) and informality (but also about students) had to be conveyed.

From the start, the book was conceived as a tool for students to refer to, more than just the historical documentation of past achievements. As such, it had to perform as a effective reference, facilitating the identification of themes, problems, grade level, authors and instructors.

The structure of the publication mirrors that of an architectural project.

An architect’s portfolio of recent work unfolds the creative process pursuant to recent, small-scale design projects. The book mirrors a more or less standard procedure: problem analysis leads to an idea which becomes a set of diagrams and develops 2D and 3D. The building phase yields a final product, but also a few leftovers, often overlooked.

Urban walls conceived as text.

The author/photographer relies on the lens to enhance an appreciation of the contem-porary urban experience by framing quotidian images and their messages, as they appear in well known places around the city of San Juan. Uprooted from their context, images are woven into a narrative of their own. An exhibit followed the publication; examples that had already vanished were acknowledged as such in the exhibit.