What Where When 2010

This year’s What Where When is based on the art theme of Metropolis. The What Where When is a 96 page booklet with approximately 960 event listings scheduled for the week of Burning Man. The outside cover design portrays both the idealism of living in a thriving, wealthy city partnered with the reality that many urban dwellers live in favelas or shanty-towns. The inside cover uses a photo of stack of rebar as a background, a reference to the many pieces of rebar used in staking and anchoring Black Rock City structures to the desert floor.

Front and back outside covers of the 2010 What Where When.

Front and back inside covers of the 2010 What Where When.

Since the booklet was printed on a 4-color press, we were able to upgrade to a tritone at no extra cost for the cover (exciting!) and use two different spot colors on the inside pages, which we used to indicate whether an event was a repeating event or a one-time event.

The design template for this year’s version remained the same at 96 pages with a pull-out art map in the center. After reading Jost Hochuli’s Detail in Typography earlier this year, I realized that I could apply some of Hochuli’s teachings for better layout and readability.

The bulk of editing work during production of the What Where When is to fit event descriptions into a very tiny space. More space for body copy hopefully could mean less production time. Last year’s version was certainly readable and an improvement on what I did for 2008, but the body copy still seemed a little large for the page size, and I was certain I could fit in more copy yet still retain enough white space for balance. Fitting the titles of events into the 2009 template meant for negative kerning at an extreme, enough to worry the printer about resolution when printed in a spot color and resulting in a few frantic phone calls at press time. The locations of the events were too faint as well, making it hard to pick out that key detail. Knowing where an event is supposed to be, even in a place as fluid and ever changing as Black Rock City, certainly increases the odds of actually finding it.

The 2009 template had Corpid Condensed body copy at 8 points with a 9 point line space. Please note some events listed have copy which could be considered NSFW. Below is an inside page from 2009:

For 2010 I updated the body copy to be 7.5/8.5. I also changed the font for the location of the event from Corpid Condensed Regular to Corpid Condensed Heavy to make it easier to see when printed as a spot color.

Inside page from 2010 What Where When

These two changes made a big difference in parsing information on the page for 2010. The extra room from the slightly smaller font size also meant less of a need for kerning and less editing for copy length overall, greatly reducing production time. Pages that had a full set of events  did not crowd against the bottom of the page, increased margins meant for better visual balance.

As a side note, editing participant copy always remains a challenge in preserving the wonderfully enthusiastic tone of each event while applying some basic editorial standards.

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