New York City
Blue Dog
Designing a Blue Dog world We were asked by Viking Studio to create a book featuring the Blue Dog paintings of Cajun artist George Rodrigue.
We proposed a document filled with a series of interactive bind-ins combined with typographic playfulness. It was so successful that they commissioned to design an entire series of books and products featuring the Blue Dog.
Over the years, the line has expanded to include gift books, calendars, note cards, journals, and sketchbooks. The products are unified by their spirit of fun, warmth, and surprise.
The first book featured an enigmatic slipcase. At first, there was some trepidation about our breaking a lot of cover design rules (small title at the bottom, no author name, it looking just kind of weird...).
Those fears soon faded away. In the words of George's wife Wendy, "Viking printed a cautious 5,000 copies of Blue Dog, released fall of 1994. The book’s popularity surprised nearly everyone but George, and the publisher reprinted quickly, now topping 200,000 copies in five languages. Blue Dog is a legend in the world of art books, something people still talk about when we visit New York."
The books were issued in a number of foreign language editions. They all incorporate engaging interactive features such as postcards, holograms, masks, and foldouts, making them as much art objects as they are printed documents.
Our designer’s dog helped with the endpapers in the first book.
