180x115mm Books
4pp Cover onto 250gsm Uncoated
Matt Lamination to outer
200pp Text onto 120gsm Uncoated
Four colour print throughout
Perfect bound
Degree show catalogues have one job: get picked up, carried around, and actually read. For Camberwell College of Arts’ MA Illustration catalogue Working With/In, we printed a compact 180x115mm book that feels confident in the hand, easy to take away from the show, and tough enough for heavy handling.
Our favourite part? The way the design leans into bold, oversized typography to counterbalance the small format. It gives the publication real presence on a table, without asking visitors to lug a brick home.
If you’re planning a similar project, our Printed Project Builder is the quickest way to map out specs and budgets, and our print journey page shows what happens from files to delivery.
Working With/In is an MA degree show catalogue aimed at students, tutors, visitors and alumni. Inside, it’s a smart mix: full colour work sits alongside black and white studio photography and written narrative, giving the book a clear rhythm as you flip.
We’re always happy to see a proper class photo in a degree show catalogue. It’s simple, but it matters — it helps readers connect names to faces, and makes the catalogue feel like a real record of a cohort, not just a list of projects.
We printed 180x115mm perfect bound books with a 4pp cover on 250gsm uncoated stock, finished with matt lamination on the outside. The 200pp text is 120gsm uncoated, printed in four colour throughout.
Uncoated stock is brilliant for this kind of catalogue: it feels warm and tactile, and it suits illustration and documentary photography really well. The trade-off is its natural stiffness — especially at a narrow width like this — so the book has a tendency to “ping” shut rather than lying dead flat.
If you’re building spreads for a similar format, avoid placing crucial content too close to the centre fold. Keep important type and faces safely away from the gutter so nothing gets swallowed when the pages spring back.
Need help getting your files spot-on? Our perfect binding set-up guide and paper samples page are a solid starting point.
The cover hits fast: a pink field with an oversized blue graphic, paired with understated black type. It’s playful, direct, and it reads from a distance — ideal when your catalogue is competing with a busy show environment.
Inside, the pacing does a lot of work. Full colour pages land like little bursts, then the book resets with black and white photography of students and studios. That alternation keeps the flip-through moving and stops 200 pages feeling relentless.
And that bold, oversize typography? It’s the right call. On a compact book, it gives headings authority and makes the editorial structure instantly legible for visitors who are scanning quickly.
The project started with a call to sense-check what was achievable within budget. We priced a softback perfect bound option alongside hardback alternatives, then helped the team land on a spec that felt purposeful without inflating costs.
With a degree show deadline in play, timing was everything. We set clear expectations for production time and flagged the real-world risk that couriers can get unpredictable around late November.
When files arrived, we preflighted the artwork and jumped in where it helped: adding bleed and splitting cover/inside exports so the job could move cleanly through pre-press. We also spotted that more pages were effectively four colour than expected, so the client could correct greyscale images and stay on budget.
This is the kind of project where our account-managed support earns its keep: quick replies, clear options, and practical fixes when student-supplied files don’t behave. We kept the spec tight, protected the deadline, and made sure the final catalogue still felt like a proper bookshop-ready object.
If you’re weighing up formats and costs for your own catalogue, get in touch on hello@exwhyzed.com to start a conversation. Not sure where to start, let's Zoom and go through the options.
