Martin Venezky Photobook

In collaboration with Jake Brossman and Diana Ferrara, we created a photobook about making the photobook. Martin Venezky, world-renowned designer and photographer, spent an intensive 5 days with us, both sharing his work and process, and influencing our own through this "conceptual" project brief. The book holds 84 pages over 42 spreads and includes imagery and photography taken entirely within those few days by the three of us. This workshop, and Venezky, fundamentally changed me as a designer. For the first time, I was free to design for design's sake, to treat design as a fine art and not for marketing purposes. It trained my eyes to see the world differently. All of a sudden, I was seeing cropped-in compositions and wild textures everywhere. I learned to free myself and to simply create and experiment. Refinement comes later in the process. First it is often a personal battle to overcome doubt, and then a satisfying flow. The pure joy of the project will always stick with me, and it has profoundly transformed how I perceive, approach, and document the world.