“Books are my passion,” says Anna Brown, associate professor in the School of Design in Massey’s College of Creative Arts. “Both the content within, and their physical, tactile form.”

Trained as a designer, Brown has worked for many years in the field of book design and typography, originally in her own business, before coming to Massey as a lecturer in 2009.

She has worked with many New Zealand photographers and artists, on projects ranging from traditional books to gallery-based experimental book installations, and with leading publishers and art galleries in New Zealand, including Victoria University Press, Te Papa Press and Random House. She also works with publishers in Australia, New York and the United Kingdom.

Co-authors in a narrative

After joining Massey, Brown completed her Master of Design with an innovative project based around the idea of a deconstructed book. Readers could post the pages on a large three-dimensional wall, adding their own comments and additions as they went.

“This work was called The endless book, exploring our relationship with social media, where users’ posts are added to, and each of us becomes co-authors in a narrative,” Brown says. “I was both the book designer and author, and by putting it in a public space I allowed readers to become co-authors, too, thus challenging the traditional concept of a book. Like social media, the pages were designed to fall away from the wall and to be replaced with new stories. This research project allowed me to investigate the concept of an expanded book in the digital age.”

In 2013, Brown was commissioned by Creative New Zealand to design the book and vernissage catalogue for the New Zealand Pavilion at the 55th Biennale di Venezia international art exhibition. New Zealand artist Bill Culbert’s installation at the Biennale had to be installed in Venice, then photographed, before the book was designed.

For the reader, viewing the works in situ was vital, given that they are sculptural pieces and that their context (in this case an historic church) was part of the experience. The book created a walk-through of the exhibition, beginning outside Venice, showing views of arrival on a boat, then entering the exhibition, journeying through it, and exiting.

“I went to the exhibition only after the book was published,” Brown says. “I felt that I knew it, but in a different manner. This is the interesting thing about reinterpreting the time and space of an exhibition and envisaging it for an audience that might never experience it in the physical form.”

From 2011 to 2015 Brown was the Director of Massey’s Open Lab, a design studio within the College of Creative Arts. She helped build this enterprise, enabling innovative partnership opportunities for students to engage in commercial design projects and research-led commissions.

“Open Lab brings together experienced design professionals, academics, graduates and students to collaborate together to deliver emergent design thinking. It works in parallel to the classroom, allowing our students to grow as designers in a safe environment with staff mentoring them.”