Not that I have any significant knowledge about the topic, but I am a closet typophile.

National Geographic, known for its beautiful photography, maps and yellow border (among other things), publishes a beautifully designed catalog (especially the typography) of their trips and tours called National Geographic Expeditions (website).

There is not much advertising mail that I receive (and I think we receive our fair share, maybe more now with the baby) that makes it out of our mailbox too much past my home office garbage pail, but I love this catalog.

The layout, photography, maps and yes, the typography, are beautiful. The sight of the new one in the mailbox brings a smile to my face. When it arrives, I thumb through it at least a couple of times and I think I’ve got a pile of about six or seven of them that I’ve saved for no other reason than that they are just absolutely beautiful.

The trips are definitely out of our price range, but if Kim and I won the lottery then taking some of these trips would be near the top of my list of things that I’d like to do simply because of their catalog. (Did I say I like the catalog?)

After searching for a bit, I think they’ve just recently started to publish a digital and PDF version on their site…which is fantastic because I can now thumb through it on my iPad.

There is a probably a side note here on the design of media for the iPad or other tablet devices as they begin to arrive – that if you make beautiful designs, you don’t have to add motion or video to everything to make it compelling or engaging. For me, the National Geographic Explorer catalog is just as joyful (if not even more so) on the iPad as it is in physical print because the design of the document itself is beautiful.

(I think of what Flipboard has done with Twitter and Facebook as another proof point of this idea.)