David Rudnick – Tomb Series
The British-born, American-raised, and self-taught graphic designer David Rudnick, whose work encompasses editorial, identity, and typographic design has just launched preorders for his highly anticipated new work – Tomb Series, created by David’s Ghent-based studio Terrain.
First created as part of the designer’s 2016 MFA thesis project Atlas, The Tomb Series is a series of compelling set of 177 individual works, referred to as Tombs, published in a 240 page hardcover book format – Tomb Index – and released as individual 1/1 artworks, plus a smaller series of screenprint editions.
Each Tomb consists of a depiction of an optical data disc on a black void, drawn by David Rudnick using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator CS3, using the trackpad on a 2012 Macbook Pro. No 3D or additional rendering software is used in their composition. The 177 Tombs are divided into eight “Houses”, with each House constituting a discrete body of work launching with different contracts, behaviours, interactions, mechanics, platform launch partners, even on different blockchains and with unique physical components
Reflecting the emergence of NFTs, the first seven of the 177 Tombs now created were the initial examples of the designer entering this space, minted and auctioned on the NFT platform Foundation in 2021. However, the next development in the Tomb Series sees these artworks move into a physical space, explored in a book format.
There will only be one print run of the currently available Tomb Index and while it’s the more traditional format of the project’s development, David’s studio have hardly held back on ensuring the book features experimentation. Outside of Tomb Index as a book format, the 177 drawings are additionally organised into eight houses each with their own unique on-chain structure. In the coming months, in partnership with Foundation, Zora, Folia and Avant Arte, the eight houses “will find their way to the chain and into people’s virtual lives”. For now however, Tomb Index will ground the project by offering “the deepest and most satisfying possible insight into its components and the Tombs themselves”. This is especially true considering how little of the book’s contents is online, “so that opening the Index for the first time is a genuine moment of discovery,” adds David.
Ahead of the release of a body of work the designer has described as “probably the hardest, but most satisfying
Preorders for Tomb Index close tomorrow, Friday 25 February.
