State Library
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Publication Design
"The Next Chapter" is a publication design project reimagining State Library Victoria's Annual Report (2024–2025). The brief was to take dense, text-heavy reporting content and design it into a cohesive, editorial publication that felt worthy of one of Victoria's most significant cultural institutions.
Annual reports for large institutions tend to be data-dense and visually flat, long blocks of text, scattered statistics, and little sense of narrative or hierarchy. For an institution as historic and visually rich as State Library Victoria, the report needed to feel considered and editorial, not like a compliance document. The challenge was balancing heavy content (board reports, program data, fellowship details) with a layout that stayed elegant, legible, and on-brand.
A geometric cover system built from the Library's iconic octagonal Domed Reading Room, paired with a navy, slate, and cream palette and a classic serif typeface to reflect the institution's heritage. Inside, large-format archival photography of the Library's architecture is used to break up text-heavy spreads, with angular diagonal cuts tying the imagery back to the cover's geometric language. Statistics pages were redesigned as bold, full-bleed typographic spreads, turning numbers like social media followers, event attendees, and visitor outcomes into the visual highlights of the report rather than buried data points.
