Underline Studio crafts tactile editorial design for Les Levine: Transmedia 1964–1974 at Oakville Galleries with silver ink and plastic paper.

Les Levine is widely recognized as a founder of media art. During the late 1960s, he pioneered disposable art, media sculpture, and software art. For his retrospective at Oakville Galleries, Underline Studio turned these concepts into a tactile book. The exterior format creates immediate physical tension. A distorted lens portrait of Levine wraps across the front cover. This black and white image meets an industrial silver ink ground. A bold red bellyband cinches the lower cover. Printed across three dense columns, it features Levine’s text piece ALL STAR CAST. The band injects urgent typographic friction against the metallic surface.

Reflective Substrates and Typographic Rhythm in Editorial Design

Underline Studio organizes the bilingual catalogue through an exacting editorial design framework. The cover pairs black grotesque display titling with clean white text on the silver ground. A sharp directional arrow marks the spine. Inside the book, the editorial design maintains generous whitespace alongside structured layouts. Section dividers use giant numerals that span the full page height. These bold numbers introduce chapters like Beginnings, Disposables, and Software. Small caption metadata anchors neatly along the lower margins. This discipline balances curatorial essays by Sarah Robayo Sheridan, Dennis Young, and Sunny Kerr.

Physical material choices reflect the artist’s historical medium experiments. Underline Studio avoids plain art book stocks. Instead, the team selects industrial finishes that evoke electronic media and manufactured plastics. The metallic silver ink shifts in natural gallery light. This surface echoes early video monitors. Synthetic plastic paper tip-ins interrupt regular page turns. These sheets give readers direct contact with the plastics Levine used in his sculptures. Coarse halftone printing on archival spreads reinforces vintage print methods. This tactile editorial design honors Levine’s pioneer spirit with clean production craft.

See more from Underline Studio on Behance.