Hasta La Ideas

For Austrian lighting company Zumtobel’s 2012 annual report, design studio Brighten the Corners worked with artist Anish Kapoor to create a two-volume publication: one book contains the facts and figures for the year, the other is a beautiful printed version of a 1998 video piece by the artist…

Brighten the Corners used Kapoor’s video projection, Wounds and Absent Objects, as the starting point for the commission which, unusually, meant designing a text-only volume (with graphic elements that link to the Kapoor work), and a lavish colour publication, which sees a rainbow of hues bursting from the centre of the spreads (and features ten neon colours).

So the first volume looks like this:

While volume two is full of pages of blended, saturated colour, like this:

As annual reports go, Zumtobel’s rather conspicuous display of inks and paper does much to suggest that the company had a pretty good year (group revenue was up 4.2% at €1.2m, though growth had slowed steadily over the year, apparently).

But that said, it’s interesting to see a relatively dry document incorporating an actual artwork into its structure, and one that chimes so well with the nature of the business in question: light and colour. Zumtobel CEO Harald Sommerer puts the commission in simpler terms in his foreword to the report: “[Kapoor] has used this medium to illustrate the power of colour and its effects on the observer.”

The entire report is available to view here on the Zumtobel website, while physical copies can be ordered here (tick the box marked, ‘Annual Report 2011/12′). The original 1988 video piece is on Kapoor’s website, here.

Art direction: Anish Kapoor and Brighten the Corners. Graphic design and layout: Billy Kiosoglou and Frank Philippin (BTC). Printing: EBS, Verona.