Work / Graphic / Ceramic reports

A report you read and also consult

Ceramic report for the Djehuty Project, the Spanish-Egyptian archaeological mission at Dra Abu el-Naga. A document read front to back and, at the same time, opened at one exact page to check a single sherd. The material it documents is material I classified myself: I was part of the Djehuty Team — a CSIC project — as a specialist in Egyptian ceramics between 2006 and 2019, seven of them as a contracted researcher. I am no longer part of the Team. This is not someone else’s report typeset by me; it is mine.

Academic editorial · InDesign — 2016

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Cover of the Djehuty Project 2016 ceramic report

Client

Djehuty Project, CSIC

Discipline

Graphic design · Editorial

Year

2016

Role

Study of the ceramic material, design, typesetting and image work

The brief

An excavation report has two readers inside the same document: the one who reads it straight through, and the one who goes directly to a given stratigraphic unit to verify a fragment.

The 2016 edition covered the pieces classed as the «Great Ceramic Deposit»: hundreds of fragments photographed, numbered and described. If the layout does not separate those two readings, the document fails both.

How it was solved

One grid that takes both. Text runs in a single wide column that is comfortable to read; the catalogue sits in a three-per-row grid with its inventory number underneath, always in the same place.

The running head states the stratigraphic unit and sector on every page — that is what people scan for. The burgundy from the cover is the document's only colour signal: running head, folio, little else.

Field photographs were corrected in Photoshop to match exposure and background across pieces shot on different days, so the grid reads as a series rather than an album.

Cover of the Djehuty Project 2016 ceramic report, with a burgundy panel over a photograph of vessels — Cover of the 2016 report

Report spread: text on the left, a grid of numbered ceramic fragments on the right — Inside: text and the Great Ceramic Deposit catalogue

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