Work / Graphic / Doctoral theses

A thesis in two volumes: the text and the plates

Design and typesetting of doctoral theses. The example is a thesis on predynastic Egyptian ceramics: not only the design and the typesetting, but the vector drawings and the object photography as well.

Doctoral thesis · InDesign · Illustrator · Photoshop

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Half-title of volume one, with VOLUMEN UNO set at large size

Work

Doctoral thesis · Egyptian ceramics

Discipline

Graphic design · Editorial

Scope

2 volumes — text and plates

Role

Design, typesetting, drawing and photography

The brief

A thesis is not an ordinary book: it carries a critical apparatus, footnotes that must never break badly, numbered figures cited from the text, and a bibliography dozens of pages long that has to be scannable with a finger.

It also has one non-negotiable requirement: the same document has to survive both the examiners reading it on screen and the final print run.

How it was solved

Two volumes on one grid, doing different jobs. Volume one is text: a single column, footnotes numbered by chapter, running heads carrying the chapter name — «01 Predynastic and protodynastic» — to orient anyone jumping between citations. Volume two holds the catalogue plates, one record per piece.

The vector drawings were made in Illustrator: the map of Egypt with its sites, the vessel profiles and the catalogue signs. Being vectors, the same figure serves at page size or reduced beside the text without being redrawn.

The photography was part of the commission too. Pieces were shot on black and worked in Photoshop to rebuild a complete vessel from several exposures — the only way to show a piece that arrives in fragments. Each plate carries its catalogue number, its inventory number, the institution holding it and a graphic scale.

Half-title of volume one, reading VOLUMEN UNO and TEXTO — Volume one — text

Half-title of volume two, reading VOLUMEN DOS and LÁMINAS — Volume two — plates

Spread with the map of Egypt drawn in Illustrator, marking the predynastic sites — The map of Egypt, drawn as vectors

Spread with a nine-part figure: drawn profiles alongside photographs of vessels — Figures: drawing and photography on one grid

A catalogue plate: the record for the piece and the vessel shot from four viewpoints with a graphic scale — A catalogue plate, with its record and its scale

Bibliography spread set in four columns — Bibliography in four columns

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