Imagine that you’re one of the world’s best book designers — some say the best — and you have to design a book about your own work. How would you feel? Excited at having the freedom to do whatever you want?
Daunted by that freedom? A bit of both?
What sort of book would you come up with? Whatever you’re thinking, I’ll bet that it doesn’t involve squeezing 704 pages into a “baby” book that’s roughly the same size as a small box of matches. Yet that’s what the Dutch book designer Irma Boom did with the book she created to accompany an exhibition of her work, “Irma Boom: Biography in Books,” which runs until Oct. 3 at the University of Amsterdam Library.
To be precise, she packed those 704 pages into a book that’s 2 inches high, 1.5 inches wide and 1 inch thick or, if you prefer metric measurements, 5 centimeters, 4 centimeters and 2.5 centimeters respectively. She bound the result in a bright red cover with the word “Boom” printed on the front in, intentionally, clumsy white letters.
When I first saw “Boom,” I presumed that its (lack of) size was a wry commentary on any or all of the following: a) the trend to produce very big, very blingy, often badly designed books; b) the realization that, since the microchip’s invention, the size of an object no longer necessarily bears any relation to its power; or c) the threat posed by Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle and other electronic readers to the traditional books that Ms. Boom designs so beautifully.
Wrong, wrong and wrong. “A lot of people have asked me about those things, but I didn’t think of them,” said Ms. Boom, laughing. “The book is small because whenever I make a book, I start by making a tiny one. Usually I make five, six or seven for each book, as filters for my ideas and to help me to see the structure clearly. I have hundreds of those small books, and am so fond of them. I’ve always wanted to make one for publication, but no one has ever wanted to do it. And I thought, well, this time, I can.”
via: New York Times Arts
Photo from: do you read me?!
