The “Holly Hunt on Opus” brochure designed by Thirst/3st: Learning how to see by asking what do you see?

Holly Hunt on Opus Image Book
Height: 13 inches / 33.2 cm. x Width: 9.5 inches / 24.13 cm.
2013
Design Firm: Thirst/3st
Art Director/Design Director/Designer: Rick Valicenti
Photographer: Tom Vack
Client: Holly Hunt Inc.
Illustrator: John Pobojewski
Designer: Robyn Paprocki
Printer: Classic Color
Photographs courtesy of Thirst/3st © 2013

Collaborative work by graphic designer Rick Valicenti of Thirst and photographer Tom Vack for the “Holly Hunt on Opus” (Sappi) publication was truly a graphic design crème de la crème event of 2013. Featured in this publication are the newest pieces from the Holly Hunt furniture collection that goes beyond what words can express. In noble fashion Holly Hunt says these new furniture artifacts “make things new again.” The “Holly Hunt on Opus” brochure is a highly aesthetic effort, a visual narrative that reveals the sophisticated and subliminal visual journey of Holly Hunt product design. Glossy, heavy Sappi paper makes the Holly Hunt product brochure unusually weighty, and allows for exceptionally high-quality images of photos and art, to a point seldom found in product brochures. The publication (64-pages with end sheets and cover) also emphasizes the performance of extraordinary printing techniques of Classic Color on high quality Sappi’s Opus paper.

In reviewing this publication here are a few observations:

1. It is very apparent that Rick Valicenti and Tom Vack convey that the visual medium can be a valid mode of narrative without words (or using very few words). 
2. In graphic design classes at Dordt the Holly Hunt publication becomes a new instrument in art and design educational methods as a case history. In this piece graphic design director Valicenti teaches students/viewers how to see by asking, “what do you see?” 
3. “Holly Hunt on Opus” is a commitment to a high level of visual excellence and encouraging example of a superbly produced brochure. To lavish attention on aesthetics achieves an artifact of preciousness that becomes a keepsake.

For the “Holly Hunt on Opus” brochure Valicenti and Vack respond distinctively to the objet d’art and what Rick has described as real human presence:

“I encourage all of you to avoid formulaic methodologies and look—inside to see if indeed the communications we foster and we bring to the humankind are full of real human presence—let’s bring life to form….” (1)

A Holly Hunt display case in the Merchandise Mart, Chicago. Graphic identity by Thirst/3st photograph by versluis, 2013.

1. Valicenti, Rick. “Human Presence.” TEDxMillCity. Minneapolis. 16 June 2010. Web. 3 Feb. 2014.