Content Object

C/O—2025 Book Report and Launch: No Wrong Holes: Thirty Years of Nayland Blake (2025) I’m head-over-heels to announce that No Wrong Holes: Thirty Years of Nayland Blake will be launched at ICA LA (@theicala ) Wednesday, January 14, from 7—8:30 pm. This book took nearly seven years to make (thanks, pandemic)—one could even say the collaboration began nearly thirty years ago, when I first met Nayland at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1996. It has been such a special project, one I hold very close to my heart. I would be absolutely thrilled to celebrate in person with you all, honoring Nayland Blake, Jamillah James, the book team, and ICA LA for this incredible (and honestly miraculous) feat. And, yes, I'll be there—big hugs in advance. Published by ICA LA Edited by Jamillah James Essays by David Evans Frantz, Jamillah James, and Maggie Nelson Reprints by Kathy Acker, DL Alvarez, Maurice Berger, Nayland Blake, Carla Harryman, and Richard Hawkins Soft cover with tip-ons and die-cut holes 216 pages + insert CMYK + special inks throughout Design: Kimberly Varella, Content Object Managing editor: Deirdre O’Dwyer Editorial and production support: Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle and Amanda Sroka Color separations: Echelon Color Printing: Ofset Yapimevi

A huge congratulations to Jeremy Frey on receiving the 2025 MacArthur Fellowship—so well deserved! I had the honor of designing Jeremy Frey: Woven last year with Rizzoli Electa (Isabel Venero) and the Portland Museum of Art (Ramey Mize)—which, coincidentally, just took first place for Exhibition Catalogues with the New England Museum Association (NEMA).

C/O—2025 Book Report: Rashid Johnson: A Poem For Deep Thinkers Designed for the artist Rashid Johnson and his 2025 Guggenheim survey of the same name, this book functions as a hybrid museum catalogue and artist’s book. Alongside scholarly essays and plates, it includes several resting areas—“design interventions” where readers can engage with Johnson’s work in a more contemplative, pre-linguistic way. These sections shift paper and color palettes, crop images closely, experiment with collaging, and pair visuals with recurring literary references, including LeRoi Jones’s 1959 poem that inspired the exhibition’s title. Publisher: Guggenheim New York, 2025 Dimensions: 8.75 × 12 in., 256 pages Curators: Naomi Beckwith and Andrea Karnes Design: Content Object, Kimberly Varella, Art Direction and Design; Gabrielle Pulgar, Production Designer Production: Jonathan Bowen and Melissa Secondino Editor: Andrea Danese Printing: Verona Libri, Verona, Italy Book Documentation: Chris Gardner

Looks like #contentobject had a little visitation to @artbookps1

C/O—2025 Book Report: Robert Frank: Mary’s Book Robert Frank: Mary’s Book is a book about a book—and dons a meticulously crafted facsimile of Frank’s intimate 1949 photobook made for his then-girlfriend, artist Mary Frank. Classic and restrained, the design is built on deliberate choices: a red foil stamp on the cover, inspired by the wax pencil marks used on contact sheets; carefully considered finishes for every material—paper, cloth, and varnish—each contributing to the book’s tactile precision and quiet elegance. Using three distinct paper stocks, each section of Robert Frank: Mary’s Book is given its own tactile and visual identity. The front and back matter—along with annotations for the facsimile—are printed on a warm buff stock, echoing the paper Frank used in his original. The essays and generously sized plates appear on a matte uncoated paper, yielding rich, velvety black reproductions. The facsimile itself is printed on uncoated stock, with each image finished by a spot-gloss coating that recalls the surface sheen of gelatin silver prints. Publisher: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2025 Dimensions: 9 × 12.5 in., 136 pages + 24 page facsimile Editor: Hope Stockton Design: Content Object, Kimberly Varella with Gabrielle Pulgar Production Editor: Diana Sibbald Printing: Graphicom, Verona, Italy Separations: Echelon, Los Angeles Book Documentation: Chris Gardner

C/O—2024 Book Report: Hello, Goodbye, Hello: The Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program at Montalvo Arts Golden chaparral, wood embossed jacket, digital monospace type that melts and squiggles into unexpected shapes, running artists stories that act like exquisite corpses. Happy 21 years LAP @montalvoarts I miss you! Color seps @echelon_color // printed @ofset.yapimevi // key photography @bamblerdander // book documentation by Chris Gardner

I am absolutely ecstatic to announce that Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art has been recognized at the Independent Publisher Book Awards with: 🥇 Gold – Best Regional Non-Fiction (West-Pacific) 🥉 Bronze – Cover Design (Non-Fiction, Oversize) It is forever and always an honor to work with @davidevansfrantz and @ondinechavoya making beautiful books—of which the object cannot exist without the content. Thank you co-publishers @williamsartmuseum @vpam_arts @curatorsintl @inventorypress for all of your support in making this book happen. And to @artbook for getting the book out there! Designed by @contentobject And, yay, IPPY @ippyawards #IPPY2025 #teddysandoval

C/O—2024 Book Report: From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments Not to be a total downer, but: “What do we do when the lights go out and the power grids fail? What happens when mass populations are systematically disconnected from the transnational capital they depend upon for basic needs? Where is the knowledge for securing food and shelter?” (back cover text) Curated and edited by Irene Georgia Tsatsos for The Armory Center for the Arts, this publication brilliantly brings together 16 contemporary artists and artist teams responding to the themes of intergenerational knowledge, connection to land, and imagined futures. Within the grounded and earthy palette lie seeds of electric, fluorescent green and pink. The book fluctuates from black-and-white, uncoated text sections to coated, 4-color artist’s plates—offering both a visual and tactile signal of a shift in content. Edited by Irene Georgia Tsatsos with contributions by Janeth Aparicio Vazquez, Olivia Chumacero, Danielle A. Hill, Sean C. Lahmeyer, Hillary Mushkin, Heber Rodriguez, Shoop Rozario, Enid Baxter Ryce, David Delgado Shorter. Artists in the exhibition: Charmaine Bee Nikesha Breeze Carl Cheng Olivia Chumacero Beatriz Cortez Mercedes Dorame, Aroussiak Gabrielian iris yirei hu Lez Batz (Sandra de la Loza and Jess Gudiel) Malaqatel Ija, Semillas Viajeras, Seed Travels Hillary Mushkin Vick Quezada Sarah Rosalena Enid Baxter Ryce Cielo Saucedo Marcus Zúñiga Color seps by @echelon_color , copyedited by Elizabeth Pulsinelli, design by @contentobject , printed by @ofset.yapimevi

C/O—2024 Book Report: Counter/Surveillance: Control, Privacy, Agency Counter/Surveillance traces the historical roots of surveillance devices and methods, and the Cold War dynamics that shaped and spread them. The large oversized trim size flops around like a reference manual, divided into two parts—Surveillance: portraying page after page of odd inventions to spy on, gather, and incriminate people; and Counter Surveillance: eight contemporary artists that “look back” with a critical outlook of these inventions, asking questions about privacy, control, and individual agency. The cover for the book features a bright red line that redacts both the face on an historical Stasi document (already redacted in original) alongside part of the title, SURVEILLANCE—both become redactions of the redacted. The specially mix red-hot ink echos the palette of the cold-war while bringing it forward into a contemporary palette, the kind of fluorescent paint one would find in a spray canister. A reminder that these histories are not so far away from our current truths. On view through 10-19-2025 @wende Designed by @contentobject , published by @wendemuseum , managing editor Deirdre O’Dwyer, color seps by Echelon Color, Los Angeles, printed by Verona Libri, Verona, Italy

C/O—2024 Book Report: Digital Witness (LACMA) Digital Witness examines the impact of digital image-editing soft­ware, tracing simultaneous developments in photography, graphic design, and visual effects over five decades (1970s–2020s) TITLE: Digital Witness // SUBTITLE: Revolutions in Design, Photo­graphy, and Film // EDITED BY: Britt Salvesen, Staci Steinberger with Christianne Hanych // AUTHORS: Kim Beil, Hye Jean Chung, Carolyn L. Kane, Briar Levit, Britt Salvesen, Staci Steinberger, Anuradha Vikram // INTERVIEWS WITH: David Fincher, Copper Frances Giloth, April Greiman, MANUAL, LaJuné McMillian, Rosa Menkman, Bert Monroy, Casey Reas, Thomas Ruff, Kyuha Shim, Raqi Syed, Cesar Velazquez // PAGES: 256 // ORIENTATION: Portrait // FILE TYPE: InDesign(R) 2024.0 Document // FILE NAME: LA2301-Digital-Witness-04.indd // FILE SIZE: 111,001, 600 bytes // TYPEFACES: ABC Favorite (Dinamo), GT America (Grilli Type), LoRes 12 (Emigre Fonts) // DESIGNED BY: Content Object // PUBLISHED BY: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, DelMonico Books • D.A.P. // ISBN: 978-1-63681-133-8_ Managed by Dawson Weber, edited by Claire Crighton, color separations by @echelon_color , and designed by @contentobject On view through 07-13-2025

January was a difficult month. Which is only to explain my long delay in sharing this amazing feature of Content Object (C/O) in Communication Arts (CA), a leading trade journal for visual communications, and the largest creative magazine in the world. I first picked up an issue of CA in 1999, at my very first design studio gig—crazy to see myself in it now! The books featured here are a just smattering from the last decade or so. Apparently Anne Teleford, the author, counted “60+ books” on my biblio! I was shocked and had to count for myself ... she was right. Each one I hold dear to my heart. In order of appearance: 1. Machine Project: The Platinum Collection (Tang Teaching Museum and DelMonico • Prestel, 2017) 2. Summer Wheat: Forager Rizzoli Electa and The Mint Museum, 2024) 3. Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour (Memorial Art Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum, and Delmonico • DAP, 2021) 4. Nineteen Nineteen (The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 2019) 5. Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces (MoMA and Studio Museum in Harlem, 2022) 6. John Waters: Pope of Trash (Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles and DelMonico Books, 2023) 7. Sadie Barnette: Legacy & Legend (Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College and Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont, CA, 2021) 8. by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960–2022) (BAMPFA and DAP) Thank you, Anne Teleford, for this insightful piece! From CA: @contentobject , the bicoastal design practice of Kimberly Varella, elevates the medium of art books through her transformative works in the cultural sector. #FEATURE #CAMagazine #DesignPractice #ArtBooks #CulturalSector #KimberlyVarella #ContentObject #BookDesign #CreativeDesign #ArtAndCulture #DesignInspiration #CommunicationArts #FeatureSpotlight @communication arts

Millie Wilson’s “Monster Girls,’ 1994 “Millie Wilson: The Museum of Lesbian Dreams,” closes today, March 1, at the Krannert Art Museum. BUT the exhibition will come to The Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State LA from October 25, 2025 to May 31, 2026.