Work / Book Design, Graphic Design, Illustration
Master's Degree Thesis
Master’s degree thesis by Fabio Santaniello Bruun: an architectural and urban regeneration project for Larderello and Val di Cecina, Tuscany. Discover the book’s design approach with full-spread images, bespoke binding inspired by Massimo Vignelli, and a minimalist layout featuring GT Walsheim type. Printed and bound by Bandecchi & Vivaldi, Pontedera.
I always said I would have enjoyed designing my thesis more than writing it. Full-spread pictures, charts and renders were going to be the heart of the project — which meant finding a binding that could open the book completely flat, without losing a single millimeter of any image to the gutter.
The book
Massimo Vignelli’s sandwich binding solved the flat-open problem: two layers of 3mm naked cardboard, filled with 204 digitally printed pages, 180×300mm, on Fedrigoni Oikos 115gsm paper.
For the typeface, Grilli Type’s GT Walsheim — round, geometric and fresh — was the right fit for the container. I optimized the final 180×300mm format for the maximum printable area of one sheet, matched to the proportions of the cartography I made of the study area: single-column, generous white space around the text box, a 4-column underlying grid for content and images, and a 7.5pt baseline grid, set in 11pt Light for body copy and 13/15pt GT Walsheim Bold for headings.
