This project objective is designing a mail order catalog that specializes on a topic of the designers choice. My topic and concept that I had chosen was making a catalog that specializes on selling only dead vermin from New York City. The creatures chosen were a fly, cockroach, rat, and the pigeon. Each of these are used in Native American totem poles. This is how I came to the idea of using the name Totem.
A totem by definition is any living creature or natural object that is beloved to have spiritual significance. For anyone who lives in New York City, knows that there are these vermin everywhere, now we just need someone to give them an importance.
For the materials used, a matte milkweed paper was used for the inner book paper. For the outside cover paper, I used a gray linen cover stock. Each chapter has an opening quote, scientific break-down, pricing, and even preservation details. I wanted to keep the layout overall very centered and simple, letting the scale of the type and the use of Engravers and Sabon Typefaces, to speak towards this idea of death and importance.
