UPDATE: We just found out that Visual Dialogue won the Grammy! Here’s a video of the acceptance speech. Congrats to Visual Dialogue!

It’s not often that a graphic designer is invited to the Grammys. Consider Fritz Klaetke and Susan Battista the exception. Their aim? Not (just) to rub elbows with celebrities. The two, who run Visual Dialogue, featured in our book, were nominated for the best boxed or special limited edition package Grammy for their work on “Woody at 100,” a four-CD Woody Guthrie centennial collection released in July by Smithsonian Folkways.

Creating Visual Briefs

In an article on Boston.com, the pair of designers talked a bit about their process for decoding ” the often jargon-laden details of a business into a common language and then, like linguistic alchemists,” turning them into what they call a “visual brief.”

That’s a challenge many designers — and marketers — face: how do you take a ton of  information — sometimes not interesting — and make it exciting?

Clearly the two did so with this project.

The Finished Product

The Guthrie collector’s edition includes a book the size of a record sleeve (deliberate, I’m sure) that includes slits to hold the CDs in the back. Throughout the book are Guthrie’s sketches and drawings, which enhance the storytelling nature of the set. And that’s what the package is: a storybook, not just a set of CDs.

Congratulations to Visual Dialogue for getting the attention of Hollywood on this project.