Biennale di Venezia 2013 http://www.labiennale.org/en/biennale/index.html

book art by Odires Mlaszho

image from Designboom® http://www.designboom.com/art/book-sculptures-by-odires-mlaszho-at-the-venice-art-biennale/

handmade & bound - bookart and zine fair

Ben Rider and Coraline Chane

back to school

This stationary has been created recycling paper bags or old envelops.

"Prototype" Fanzine is out

Bind'n Bitch published its first two issues of a fanzine Prototype.

The first one throws the Manifesto of the group which is based on principles such as recycling, re-using,  free,  found and so on. The idea is to create work without buying anything.

The Prototype #0  has been designed by Barbara Salvadori. A4 photocopy on one side and screen-printed on both sides. The cover made of corrugated cardboard and a red elastic band from the Royal Mail.

 

Austin Charles Williams and Eloise Harris are the authors of the Prototype #1. The title is "Riddle", a well designed and a real fan-zine. Great results and coherent with the group's manifesto, so everything was recycled from discarded printed material.

There will be soon a blog dedicated exclusively to the fanzine meanwhile Joe Waghorn and Coraline Chaine are working hard on issue 2.

A blog dedicated exclusively to Prototype is ready to be launched soon.

Altered Books

A reinterpretation of printed material. Two artists; Brian Dettmer and Thomas Allen. Also I couldn't resist to try myself.

# 1 - Brian Dettmer http://www.ktfineart.com/artists/brian_dettmer/?show=home

http://centripetalnotion.com/2007/09/13/13:26:26/#more-550 

# 2 - Thomas Allen works with book covers creating scenes and stories just with cut-out images. Angles of the viewer, shadows and light creates a new story often using more than one book.  Here is his web site; http://thomasallenonline.com/

# 3 - Barbara Salvadori plays with comics inspired by Thomas Allen.

Dafi Kühne

Laser-cut technology combined with traditional letterpress is what Dafi Kühne, Graphic Designer/Letterpress/Printmaker from Switzerland is passionate about.
His way of exploring technology and braking the rules is very inspiring. 
This link http://www.woodtype-now.ch/ is an on-line catalogue to really look at in details and
clicking on each image three times, shows all the details of the print and the plate itself. These are sample of his plates on show at St. Brides Library during the conference "Forward Thinking".

 










From Dafi's web site http://www.babyinktwice.ch/  4Colour Process process poster. 
He used a big solar plate, exposed it in the sun and washed it in the bathtub.
Here it is the link with the video. http://www.babyinktwice.ch/index15.php

Irma Boom - Design books

Why a Graphic Designer should be able to design a book.
The Dutch Graphic Designer Irma Boom is showing how boring catalogues can become a book object, a collectable piece.
What I like about this video it's all the tips and comments that Irma tells about her work. These are just few...

• If you design something for a client (or commissioner as she says) who you know too well, it can be restrictive in terms of inspiration.

• She hates...doesn't like handmade books, she likes machine-made books. She sees the book as a democratic object. However, she knows how to make them because she makes a lot of models to understand and see if her ideas work. This also helps her to communicate with the people who are going to work for her; bookbinders, printers, paper suppliers...She often has to defends her ideas. Like when a publisher told her that white books do not sell and she wanted the book white. The book, in the end, sold really really well. As she says "book people" are conservative and often they restrict your creative ideas. It seems that a good way to design a good book is to go against the "current" and experiment a lot.

• The choice of paper is very important. Paper has such an important role that should be considered one of the key elements of any project. 

• An ordinary book catalogue about rugs can, in the end, be interesting not just for people who are into that business, but also for those who like the book as design object.

• Internet is for her another key point in her work. Books like hers, are available all over the world and people can access them easily. Selling only through the bookshop wouldn't be so successful.

•  She designed the layout of a catalogue after printing all the images in stamp size. She could then play with the sequence of the images according to colours, shapes. The book in the end, turned up different than the one imagined.

• When she was commissioned to do a special work that had to last 500 years, she excluded the electronic format because anything electronic will be out of date but a book, will be never out of date if it is made with good quality material.

• The attention to details in her work it's incredible. The work itself becomes an object to discover every time it is examined; the spine of a big book made of steel to make it open well; bookmarks that reveal the title of the book; a white cover revealing its own text when it gets dirty; 

B&B nº5

Here we are...again. It's getting busier down in the den.

strategy planning

Joe works gently the corner with the bone folder.
The glue is still fresh and sticky.
The pressure of the bone folder will shape the corners.

a bit of glue to stick down the mull before gluing the end-paper.

remember to lift gently the spine while you are keeping the fingers on the side, to stop the book moving.
Lift the front cover and gently put it down.

work at the edge of the table, with the side of the book cover that you are glueing, sticking out from the table. Use the roller to bend the book cloth and glue it evenly.









 use your thumb to stick down the book cloth.

the first underground movement

Our first meeting was just a warm up...