Collective States: Worlds of Photograph at the AGO

Published November 3, 2026

Focal was used throughout this entire photo book produced by the Art Gallery of Ontario’s photo department. Even with Focal’s smaller x-height it holds up well at small sizes. Designed by Polymode (Brian Johnson, Silas Munro, Randa Hadi). The cover has the title in a beautiful foil stamp which is hard to photograph.

From Polymode:

Collective States: Worlds of Photography at the AGO celebrates 25 years of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Photography Department, drawing from the museum’s permanent collection to capture a rich and expansive portrait of photography’s evolving role within the institution and beyond. Featuring over 200 images, the publication is organized into five thematic groupings, Stories We Tell, People We’ve Met, Things We Make, Places We’ve Been, and What We Imagine, offering multiple entry points into the medium through memory, identity, place, and imagination.

The design approach balances the book’s curatorial structure with the immediacy of the photographic image. Layouts shift between intimate detail and full-frame reproductions, allowing viewers to experience photographs both as documents and as objects, and to build a close relationship with the surfaces, gestures, and material qualities embedded in each work.

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The typographic system draws on the typeface Focal for its historical resonance and specificity, referencing the distinctive qualities of a now-lost era of printing production. This choice reinforces the book’s underlying themes of preservation and transmission, while honoring photography’s longstanding relationship to reproduction and craft.

Together, the book functions as both an archive and an invitation, capturing a collective visual history while leaving space for personal interpretation and discovery.

Read full story.

WRITTEN BY

FontsInUse

An independent archive of typography.