I am a London-based designer specializing in editorial design and typography. This is a cluster of some design work and personal projects, old and new. If you click on the images here you will be able to read a summary of the project and go on to albums showing the work in more detail.

Richard Marston

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Extreme NatureCollins, 2005280 x 250 mm  ·  208 x 186 mm Picture book showcasing the animal kingdom’s strangest or most extreme creatures. The paperback was published in a mini-format of about two-thirds size. Typefaces: Fresco, Fresco Sans.
It’s About that TimeAtlantic Books, 2005216 x 153 mm Biography of jazz musician Miles Davis and an analysis of his dozen most famous albums. As well as period portrait photos, the book showed images of all the original LP album covers, placed at the points in the text where first mentioned. The most important ones each had a part of one chapter to themselves and included recording session information (track titles, musicians, dates). Typefaces: TheAntiqua, TheSans.
Road marks — a subjective alphabet This was an experiment in phenomenology. The philosopher Heidegger describes it as ‘the process of letting things manifest themselves.’ It attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured, something so taken for granted that it is muted by normal observation. The aim is to reawaken a sense of wonder about the world around us.
Books That Shook the World Atlantic Books, 2006–7198 x 129 mm A series style text design for a group of titles about some of the world’s greatest books. Typeface: Palatino.
Balfour BeattyAtlantic Books, 2010280 x 230 mm Large format book marking the hundredth anniversary of the engineering and construction company. Typefaces: Miller Text, Gill Sans.
Purple Citrus & Sweet PerfumeHutchinson, 2010246 x 189 mm Cookery book featuring Ottoman recipes from Turkey. The book includes some location photography, poetry and extracts from literature. For the ingredients lists I decided to set the various quantities as right-aligned elements so that it is easier to glance back to double-check, and generally I avoided using decorative rules, frames and calligraphy elements. One small decorative motif, inspired by a traditional textile design, was used between the page numbers and chapter running heads.  Typefaces: TheAntiqua, TheSans, Garamond Premier.
Number One in HeavenPenguin Books, 2006Penguin Books An encyclopedia of obituary-biographies of pop and rock stars. A three-column grid was used for standard entries, with entries for major figures on a two column grid. In addition, some entries were grouped by special categories and  shown in panels or highlighted by using different text font. Typefaces: Garamond, Interstate.
Johnson’s DictionaryPenguin Books, 2005198 x 129 mm An anthology of entries from the Dr Johnson dictionary. The design references some of the typesetting conventions of Johnson’s time in the entry detailing, while also using a left-aligned column structure to ensure even word spacing in the paragraphs. Typeface: Minion.
Grand Designs HandbookCollins, 2006246 x 189 mm Due to a very tight schedule, a number of designers were involved in the various parts of this book. The design of the middle part that I worked on (‘Dreaming’) consists of five illustrated essays, each then followed by a number of case study spreads that show particular projects in more detail. The heading is a combination of case study title and a small ‘entry point’ image highlighted with a colour, with a brief description below. This arrangement is consistent throughout the chapter. To the left of these and on successive pages are a range of interior details, mostly presented without captions and placed freely across the ten-column page grid. Typeface: Nexus Sans.
UnrecountedPenguin Books, 2004198 x 129 mm The main part of the book was collaboration between poet and illustrator, followed by a pair of accompanying essays. Pages printed in two colours. Typeface: Walbaum.
In the PictureAllen Lane, 2004220 x 170 mm The passing weeks of the year as portrayed in art. Artwork titles were positioned to function both as a section title and caption to the image. A chapter number marks each week and there are occasional short ‘voice-over’ introdutory comments. Typefaces: Scala Sans, Minion.
300kph Tokaido shinkansen Random images captured from the window of a speeding bullet train during a journey from Tokyo to Kyoto. I like the contrast between the abstracted strips of motion-blurred foreground and the utter stillness of the mostly urban backgrounds.