Hi, I’m Hannah Tjaden. I am a graphic designer with an MFA from the Yale School of Art. I make books, websites, moving images, illustrations and various objects informed by research and my previous experience as an art historian. Currently working on a new exhibition catalogue on Jannis Kounellis and teaching graphic design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Get in touch by sending me an e-mail. Full portfolio and CV on request.

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  1. ፠ Book Series for Larkin Erdmann Gallery, Zürich books
  2. ፠ Ephemera for Larkin Erdmann Gallery, Zürich ephemera
  3. ፠ Ken Price: Not From Yesterday book
  4. ፠ Kunsthandelsverband Switzerland identity, website
  5. ፠ Textile Architectures book
  6. ፠ Performance Review research, performance
  7. ፠ Alighiero Boetti: Magic Squares book
  8. ፠ A selection of illustrations
  9. ፠ OK together book
  10. ፠ Shirt As...objects
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I’ve been designing a series of exhibition catalogues for Zürich based gallery Larkin Erdmann since 2017. I’ve made 13 numbered books for them so far. They are relatively small for an exhibition catalogue (soft-cover, A5) but intended to travel easily by mail to clients who couldn’t visit the exhibition in person. Up until the 10th book, the covers were intentionally void of any imagery. Now, they have evolved to include a singular motif or detail debossed and foilblocked.

Fig. 1–5 photography by Xi Li.
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In addition to books, there’s gallery ephemera including posters, mini book totes, gallery maps, wayfinding and postcards.


Fig. 3 photography by Flavio Karrer.
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Here are some interior spreads from Book #12 on the drawings and sculptures of American artist Ken Price. The catalogue features an essay from curator Dieter Schwarz and photographs by Flavio Karrer. The book is A5 perfectbound and printed offset with Die Keure in Belgium. Since book 11, we’ve been using G.F Smith Colorplan for the cover with foilblocked text and image and Sappi Galerie Silk for the interior pages.

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The Kunsthandelsverband der Schweiz (or, in English, the Swiss Art Trading Association) needed a new identity and website. Our new logo composed of four Swiss crosses forms an abstracted map of Switzerland, holding the organizations name and acronym. The site features all the members with their own pages, a bespoke login panel with a tool for voting on the associations mandates.

A collaboration in design with Paul Bille and development by Manus Nijhoff.

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Textile Architectures was a book for the Yale School of Architecture published in 2020 with a foreward by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen. It includes essays and object studies tracing the history of textiles in use in architecture from ancient knotting practices to contemporary curtain walls. The perfectbound softcover book is 9×6 inches, printed and bound in the United States using a print-on-demand service.

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My own research interests centers on instruction and performance. Performance as Instruction, Instruction as Performance was developed in the context of a workshop led by Linda van Deursen in 2022 using images from my collection of photographs from instruction manuals from the 60s and 70s combined with performance art documentation of the same time. This led to two more performances on instruction: How To... and Performance Review.

Fig. 1-3 photography by Yuseon Park, video by Churong Mao.
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An exhibition catalogue on the Italian arte-povera artist Alighiero Boetti titled Magic Squares. It features an essay by Francesca Franco in both Italian and English and was made in close collaboration with the Archivio Alighiero Boetti and the Fondazione Alighiero e Boetti, both based in Rome. The cover uses Fedrigoni’s Nettuno in Nero with colours for the type pulled from Boetti’s embroidered paintings illustrated inside. Die Keure tested and experimented with UV printing to achieve vibrancy in colour on black stock.

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Here are a selection of illustrations I’ve done for various projects.

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A small but thick exhibition catalogue designed with Miguel Gaydosh and photographs by Dylan Beckman. This perfect bound book measures 6×4.3 inches and is an inch thick with 364 interior pages. The soft cover is GPA DigiFly, which feels like a plastic coated fabric – it’s nice to touch. Printed and bound in the United States by GHP.

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Shirt As... are a series of 5 cotton shirts made as an invitation for intimacy. Published in Paprika! Issue 2, Volume 8: Transient Intimacy, October 2022.

Figs. 1–5 photography by Xi Li.
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