Mid-Century Gothic: The Design of Nancy Drew & the Eight Limited Print Copies

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The 2024 F. David Hoeniger Book Collection Prize Exhibition is on display in the front foyer of the E.J. Pratt Library from March 17 to April 11, 2025.

I collaborated with my colleague, Colin Deinhardt (Interim Head, Reader Services) to curate the exhibition. As one of the curators, I was primarily responsible for planning and executing the visual design of the exhibition. Additionally, Colin and I created a detailed plan for the exhibition. It delineated the various tasks and milestones that had to be achieved to ensure the timely launch of the exhibition.

Finally, as a co-curator, I was also responsible for planning the arrangement of the artifacts in the exhibit cases located in the front foyer of the library. In turn, they were beautifully installed by Laura Fedynyszyn (Conservator), in the week leading to the launch.

Design Elements of the Exhibition 

As part of this role, I created seven different visual elements for the exhibition:

  • a small promotional poster (above), which is inspired by, but does replicate, a typical cover of a book from the Nancy Drew series published between the 1930s and the ‘60s

  • posters with the various book covers on display, affixed to the back of the exhibition cases

  • the exhibition statement, which includes the collector’s elucidation on the content of her collection and the inspiration behind her decision to create it

  • the exhibition credits, which provide information on the work of the curators and the conservator, the design of the exhibition

  • the exhibition credits serve as a colophon for the exhibition

  • in book design, a colophon typically provides interesting details about the typefaces and paper used in a particular book, methods of printing, and the names of individuals who contributed to the production of the book, such as the artists responsible for its design, format, and illustrations

  • the exhibition credits also include acknowledgements, giving credit to the colleagues who supported our work

  • I also designed the artifact labels, which list the author, title, and publication details associated with each book on display

  • the artifact numbers, featuring the small magnifying glass icon

  • finally, I also created the exhibition website, which contains the collector’s statement about her collection, a complete bibliography of the titles in the exhibition, and the exhibition credits.

I used Adobe Photoshop to design these various visual components of the exhibition. The main challenge in designing this exhibition stemmed from the current copyright status of the Nancy Drew series, which is not in the public domain. Consequently, it was not possible to simply replicate the aesthetic of the series and incorporate it into the design of the exhibition. And frankly, I feel this approach to designing the exhibition would not have been very ambitious or challenging.  

My overall goal in the visual design was to combine the various elements of the books published between the 1930s and the ’60s to capture the classic look of the novels, but without necessarily replicating a particular cover entirely. In 1946, artist Rudy Nappi (1923–2015) was hired by art director Ted Tedesco at Grosset & Dunlap, the publisher of the Nancy Drew series, to redesign the series’ cover. Nappi created the yellow and black colour palette of the book covers published in the 1950s and the ’60s.

Typefaces

The main title of the exhibition is set in the decorative, display typeface called De Vinne Becker Ornament. It is a variation of De Vinne, designed by Theodore Low De Vinne (1828–1914), an American printer and scholar of typography, around 1894. De Vinne appeared on the cover of the books between the 1930s and the ’40s.

I used a variation of this typeface called De Vinne Becker Ornament as it is a display typeface. In typography, a display typeface is a font designed for large-scale, eye-catching applications like titles, headlines, and logos, rather than for extended passages of text.

The subtitles and subheadings are designed in Lydian. Lydian appeared on the covers of the books in the series during the 1940s and the ‘60s. Lydian is a humanist sans-serif typeface created in 1938 by designer and children’s book illustrator Warren Chappell (1904–1991) and named after his wife, Lydia Chappell (1891–1979).

It may look familiar to you. In recent years, Lydian has regained popularity and is frequently featured on the cover design of literary novels, poems, memoirs, and other books.   

The text of the exhibition statement and exhibition credits are set in Baskerville, the same typeface that has been used to set the text of the books over the years. I added ligatures to the text of these two components.

In typography, ligatures are unique glyphs that combine two or more characters into a single unit. They improve the appearance and readability of text by addressing issues such as awkward spacing or visual clashes between adjacent letters. Ligatures are commonly used in serif typefaces, script fonts, and other decorative styles to create a smoother flow and enhance the typographic aesthetics.

These three typefaces (De Vienne Becker Ornament, Lydian, and Baskerville) are combined with the yellow and black colour palette of the book covers published in the 1950s and the ‘60s to create the overall aesthetic of the exhibition. Essentially, it pays tribute to the visual appearance of the novels published between the 1930s and the ‘60s.

Research & Preparation

Through extensive research into the publishing history and literary criticism of the Nancy Drew series, I gained insights into their lasting legacy and enduring popularity. In turn, this knowledge informed my selection of the appropriate typefaces and colour scheme for the final exhibition design.

The University of Toronto Libraries’ catalogue directed me to several excellent books and articles in journals and encyclopedias, including: 

In addition to these publications, I consulted an online exhibition entitled Nancy Drew and Friends: Girls’ Series Books Rediscovered. It is curated by Ann Hudak (a librarian and curator at the University of Maryland Libraries). The digitized artifacts are part of the Rose and Joseph Pagnani Collection, which was donated to the University of Maryland Libraries Special Collections in 1998 by alumna Elissa Pagnani (who received a Masters of Library Science degree from the University of Maryland College of Library and Information Services in 1995).

Pagnani donated the collection in honour of her parents, Rose and Joseph Pagnani. The collection contains over 300 books from 33 different girls’ series published between 1917 and 1980, with the bulk of the collection dating from the 1930s through the ’60s. The collection is housed in the Maryland Room in Hornbake Library.

The exhibition provided the opportunity to closely examine how the physical appearance of the specific titles in the series has changed over the years.