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Looking Good : a visual guide to the nuns habit
All you ever wanted to know about nuns and their habits
From Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music to Nobel Peace Prize recipient Mother Teresa (now St Teresa of Calcutta), nuns occupy a special place in popular consciousness as figures of fondness, fun, strictness, purity and grace. Many of us identify nuns by their deceptively simple form of dress – few of us understand, however, that the habit is also a visual code.
A collaboration between GraphicDesign&, Cambridge theology graduate Veronica Bennett and graphic illustrator Ryan Todd, Looking Good: A visual guide to the nun’s habit identifies and illustrates the dress of more than 40 Catholic communities of nuns and sisters. It catalogues and compares this ‘extra ordinary’ religious clothing, explaining its components, significance and distinguishing identifiers. The accompanying text, incorporating visions and miracles, high drama and humble beginnings, persecution and insurrection, reveals how the story of the habit is also that of the struggle between the powerful and the poor; of politics, social care and the role of women; and of the interplay between culture, fashion and faith.
From Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music to Nobel Peace Prize recipient Mother Teresa (now St Teresa of Calcutta), nuns occupy a special place in popular consciousness as figures of fondness, fun, strictness, purity and grace. Many of us identify nuns by their deceptively simple form of dress – few of us understand, however, that the habit is also a visual code.
A collaboration between GraphicDesign&, Cambridge theology graduate Veronica Bennett and graphic illustrator Ryan Todd, Looking Good: A visual guide to the nun’s habit identifies and illustrates the dress of more than 40 Catholic communities of nuns and sisters. It catalogues and compares this ‘extra ordinary’ religious clothing, explaining its components, significance and distinguishing identifiers. The accompanying text, incorporating visions and miracles, high drama and humble beginnings, persecution and insurrection, reveals how the story of the habit is also that of the struggle between the powerful and the poor; of politics, social care and the role of women; and of the interplay between culture, fashion and faith.
263 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 23, 2017
This was an impulse purchase, when I spotted the graphics for the book as wallpaper on a downloads website. A striking but not so subtle advert, and one which got me hooked.
The book is a compendium of nuns orders with graphics showing their habits and text outlining their origins, mission and geographical spread.
I am not in the least bit religious but I bought this as a break from my normal run of books and also to gain an insight on a segment of society that I know next to nothing about, beyond the clichés portrayed in films such as Sister Act and the Blues Brothers.
Intriguing book with snappy graphics but ultimately a list of types of nuns is a little samey. As dry as something very dry.
The book is a compendium of nuns orders with graphics showing their habits and text outlining their origins, mission and geographical spread.
I am not in the least bit religious but I bought this as a break from my normal run of books and also to gain an insight on a segment of society that I know next to nothing about, beyond the clichés portrayed in films such as Sister Act and the Blues Brothers.
Intriguing book with snappy graphics but ultimately a list of types of nuns is a little samey. As dry as something very dry.
October 11, 2025
This is an interesting idea and executed mostly well. Breaking down the meaning and identifying characteristics of a nuns'/sisters' habits is interesting in the same way it would be interesting to have a guide to military regalia (what does that ribbon mean? why does that uniform have oak leaves?) or a guidebook for identifying birds of North America (it has red on its shoulders; its beak is yellow; the tail feather is very long). With this guide, a reader can identify common color choices for various religious traditions, who wears/doesn't wear shoes, and styles of wimples and veils. A brief intro about each religious institute was a nice touch.
However there are some aspects that could have improved. First, this needed a little more input from the editor. For example, almost everything in the back of the book should have been in an introduction. This is where the authors covered everything from the basics of "what is a nun?" to their connection to the material. Encountering that after reading about the individual habits is counterproductive. If that background information is crucial enough to include, it should set the stage for the meat of the work, namely the visual guide to habits.
The issue that irks me the most, however, is graphic related. This is a graphic design book. It is applying concepts of graphic design to interpreting visual information one might encounter in the wild. At it's heart, it is a book about understanding visual identity. The introductory text at the start of each section is in a very large font that does not appear to this layperson to be in the same design vocabulary as the rest of the book. It is serif and italic and exceedingly, almost comically, oversized in comparison to every other page. And every other page is my main concern with this book. Not the content (although there is a claim about Mexico banning nuns' habits in the late 20th century when it was actually the late 20th century when the early 20th century ban was lifted, which doesn't inspire confidence in the fact checking), but rather the choice of barely legible fonts in a graphic design book. The type face was at best 8 points, but I'm betting smaller than that. The blue text in the first section and the green text in the last section skewed to barely making enough contrast against the off-white, gray-toned paper. It was particularly hard to read any of the information on the right side of the page which used a lighter line weight than the text on the left.
The established design vocabulary for each entry, however, was superb. It was easy to determine which part of the habit was being discussed and I thought it was clever to have the sisters facing towards the reader if they were public facing or turned away from the reader if they were cloistered.
However there are some aspects that could have improved. First, this needed a little more input from the editor. For example, almost everything in the back of the book should have been in an introduction. This is where the authors covered everything from the basics of "what is a nun?" to their connection to the material. Encountering that after reading about the individual habits is counterproductive. If that background information is crucial enough to include, it should set the stage for the meat of the work, namely the visual guide to habits.
The issue that irks me the most, however, is graphic related. This is a graphic design book. It is applying concepts of graphic design to interpreting visual information one might encounter in the wild. At it's heart, it is a book about understanding visual identity. The introductory text at the start of each section is in a very large font that does not appear to this layperson to be in the same design vocabulary as the rest of the book. It is serif and italic and exceedingly, almost comically, oversized in comparison to every other page. And every other page is my main concern with this book. Not the content (although there is a claim about Mexico banning nuns' habits in the late 20th century when it was actually the late 20th century when the early 20th century ban was lifted, which doesn't inspire confidence in the fact checking), but rather the choice of barely legible fonts in a graphic design book. The type face was at best 8 points, but I'm betting smaller than that. The blue text in the first section and the green text in the last section skewed to barely making enough contrast against the off-white, gray-toned paper. It was particularly hard to read any of the information on the right side of the page which used a lighter line weight than the text on the left.
The established design vocabulary for each entry, however, was superb. It was easy to determine which part of the habit was being discussed and I thought it was clever to have the sisters facing towards the reader if they were public facing or turned away from the reader if they were cloistered.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews