Morgan Crowcroft-Brown is a photobook designer and production manager. She works for MACK.
Episode 64: Morgan Crowcroft-Brown is a book designer and production manager working in photography. She is currently the in-house designer and production manager for MACK. On average, she designs about fifteen photobooks and oversees and manages about thirty per year for the publisher on average and many of those titles go on to be included in the top titles of annual reviews and lists.
Designing a photobook is a a labor of love. It takes a keen eye and particular sensibility to navigate the book itself. It also takes talent to work closely with an artist to realize his or her vision. Imagine trying to carefully sculpt out a beautiful object for an artist who may or may not be familiar with design and the mechanics of production. It takes a cool head to make choices that will make their book successful and may even counter the artists intuition. Designers are important and artists should pay heed to their expertise.
Ciprian Honey Cathedral by Raymond Meeks
In our conversation, Morgan and I speak about our shared passion for books. It isn’t often that I get the chance to really geek out with someone about books that I love. For the most part, a good number of the people I work with in photography love a good book, but they are not too obsessive about the craft, per se. This is not the case with Morgan and the episode is a full geek out between us about a number of artists that we both adore.
Fernweh by Teju Cole
Another topic we speak about and I think it is quite important is the topic of the gender gap in photobook publishing. It was an illuminating part of the conversation and something that Morgan is passionate about. It was good for me to hear her thoughts on the matter and to discuss how it is that the publishing world still operates an unspoken bias on the topic of gender.
Dyckman Haze by Adam Pape
These conversations help illuminate ideas about “soft” discrimination etc. and I think it is important that we begin to start addressing the situation. The conversation was fair and balanced and I hope it sheds some light on the matter.
