University of New Mexico Press senior designer Kathleen Sparkes has won the Publishers Association of the West (PubWest) gold medal for best design of an academic book for her work on "Cave, City and Eagle's Nest: An Interpretative Journey Through The Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2."
Edited by Davíd Carrasco and Scott Sessions, "Cave, City and Eagle's Nest" is an archaeological examination of an important 16th-century pictorial manuscript that documents the culture of an indigenous Mesoamerican peoples.
"Since the book is not only an edited volume of interpretations but also a presentation of the Mapa for scholars, it was important to portray the Mapa most accurately," says Sparkes. "It was crucial the book be in color, and we reproduced the Mapa in sixteen fold-out tip-ins of its sections so it could be examined in detail."
In addition to the fold-outs and an 18 x 30-inch color insert of the map, the handsome 500-page book contains 300 color photographs, 16 halftones, 109 line drawings and 4 maps.
"Cave, City and Eagle's Nest" was one of more than 100 book entries in 20 different categories in PubWest's design competition. Judges considered books' typography, cover design, interior, format and materials, and printing and binding production quality.
"The biggest challenge in designing the book was to compile the varied materials of the scholars and present them in a cohesive format," explains Sparkes. "The large book format allowed for detail images to be presented in a larger size, and also a slightly larger type size, while keeping the page count down as much as possible."
The cost of printing the large color volume was offset by a generous grant from Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
Sparkes, of Los Lunas, New Mexico, has been a designer with UNM Press
for five years. She previously freelanced in commercial marketing and publication design. Earlier this year she won Bookbuilder's West design award for best scholarly book for "New Perspectives on Pottery Mound Pueblo," an archaeology text edited by Polly Schaafsma.
In its 24th year, PubWest's annual awards competition will honor winners with medallions in a ceremony at its national publishing conference in Portland, November 13-15.
PubWest is a nonprofit trade organization that serves its members, which range from small independent presses to university presses to international publishers. Membership is based primarily in the western U.S. and Canada.
Posted by scarr at May 7, 2008 11:24 AM