twenty-six.design is an independent design, editorial, and research studio led by Jarrett Fuller. Our work takes shape across a variety of media, from books and websites to podcasts and installations and we work with clients large and small, around the world.
In addition to client work, we also produce experimental work, research projects, and original content, including Scratching the Surface, a weekly design criticism podcast; readings.design, an online archive of canonical graphic design texts; and other books and speculative projects.
Jarrett Fuller interviews MACK Books's Morgan Crowcroft-Brown for Eye on Design
“The details are not the details,” said Charles Eames. “The details make the design.” I think Eames is saying that all the little, seemingly invisible decisions that no one else will notice, these are the things that make a piece of design work or not work. This idea is perhaps never more evident than in designing a photo book. As a long-time photography enthusiast, I’ve always found the book to be the ideal format for looking at images: it’s intimate and accessible, sequential and narrative.
I’ve collected photo books for years but, strangely, never considered their design. My interest in them was purely photographic — I was interested in the photographer or the narrative or the type of images. In the case of a photo book, this is often the marker of good design: one shouldn’t be distracted by the size of the book or the quality of the paper or the typographic choices: all of these decisions are in service of the photographs. The details make the design.
Over the last few years, I started to notice that many of my favorite photo books were designed by the same person. Morgan Crowcroft-Brown is the designer and production manager (or “production manager and designer,” she tells me. “Because I’m uncomfortable calling myself a designer”) for MACK, the London-based photography publisher. Since 2018, Crowcroft-Brown has worked on books for photographers ranging from Stephen Shore to Teju Cole, Luigi Ghirri to Deanna Templeton.
Many of the decisions Morgan makes involve these invisible details: what paper to use, the type of binding, how big the margins should be, how the photographs should be printed. If there’s a through-line through Morgan’s books, it’s a respect for materials: a clear understanding of the physicality of these objects and how they shape our reaction to them. Morgan and I spoke over Zoom recently to talk about how she negotiates these design decisions, as well as her own design education and why the details really are the design.