Art books should have a certain allure, one that makes you want to open its cover and discover the story within. Many of the major book publishers, however, have found themselves in a rut. The same big name artists—both deceased and living—make regular…
Like so many businesses today, the publishing industry is facing new challenges due to rapidly changing technologies. With the New York Art Book Fair taking place on 20-22 September, we chatted with three art book publishers…
For those who have nothing left to pick over at the local bookstore’s summer display, theNewerYork looks to shake things up in the mainstream literary world by hosting alternatives to the “triumvirate” of poetry, short stories…
Curator Chris Anderson on the media company’s new publishing platform
In a recent sit-down with TED Curator Chris Anderson, I had the chance to try out the TED Books app, a dedicated platform to hold the company’s publishing endeavor. Focused on short books, TED Books hopes to continue TED’s method of viral ideation by tailoring to today’s attention spans. This addition to the TED family has fascinating implications for the company, which has clearly moved from an annual meeting-of-the-minds to a global media phenomena. As Anderson, a publishing veteran, explains, “TED is a media organization devoted to ideas worth spreading.”
“Arguably, a lot of the reason why books are the length they are is because the physical form demands it. If you were to print a short book, it just feels cheap, so things have to be 80,000 words regardless of whether or not the content demands it,” says Anderson. “A book that fit the length of the idea that it’s trying to express became interesting to us.” Long enough to communicate the idea and short enough to feel unimposing, TED settled on 20,000 words—an ideal length for a single sitting.
“In a magazine, the mode of behavior is bit like a playground in that you browse—a page here, a page there. With a book, you’re on a train journey. You start and you work your way through, and there’s something very satisfying about that,” explains Anderson. “So what do you do on an iPad where you have lots of reasons to play and lots of opportunities to play?” After searching through available platforms, they settled on Atavist. The platform gave TED the level of interaction they were seeking, with narrative linearity and optional browsing of multimedia tangents.
Launched last January, TED Books is now moving away from Kindle singles to their dedicated app. The new platform accommodates browsing through in-line items that can link to images, maps, audio and video. Best of all, the interaction is optional—users choose the way in which they read by toggling the additional elements on or off. There is also social element that allows for a kind of user-generated marginalia. While books come in at $2.99 on the free app, TED encourages the subscription model for $14.99, which delivers two monthly books for three months. Founding subscribers (people who sign up in the first 90 days) will also receive free access to the entire back catalog of TED Books. Because users know what to expect from TED, the company can get away with this subscription model.
“I think one of the biggest problems in the book publishing world as it goes online is just the problem of discovery—so what’s the equivalent of walking into a bookstore and browsing to find the thing you want? The subscription model is an interesting alternative. You just say ‘Look, trust us.'”
The TED Books app is now available on iTunes. Check out the app in action by watching TED’s video.
A paper-engineering tribute to Italian designer Carlo Mollino
Okolo has long been a favorite destination for great finds in Eastern Europe. One of their latest projects caught our attention when we ran into them in Milan during Design Week—a simply bound, spine-less book on the life and work of Carlo Mollino. “Okolo Mollino” represents the publisher’s tribute to the 20th-century Italian renaissance man, whose interests and talent took him from notability in architecture and interior design to prominence as an acrobatic pilot and alpine skier. The book is divided into six chapters that explore his multidimensional character, and includes various paper cutouts that can be engineered to resemble Mollino’s own works, and it’s limited to a scarce 80 copies.
The text primarily covers anecdotes from Mollino’s life, like the time he drove his Porsche all the way to Switzerland to obtain the first iteration of the Polaroid camera, which was unavailable in Italy at the time. He then furnished three luxurious residences to serve as spaces in which to photograph his women—mainly local Turin prostitutes—whose portraits gave him his name.
Mollino’s career as designer spanned from theater houses to race cars. In his foreword, Casa Mollino curator Fulvio Ferrari lends insight into the creation of the Bisiluro Damolnar race car. “One day, while flipping through a newspaper, Mollino found a photo of the Osca car owned by his friend Mario Damonte,” he says. “He immediately thought about how to improve its design and drew his visions straight on to the newspaper page. This is how Osca was transformed into Bisiluro: a revolutionary rocket-shaped car Mollino designed for the 24-hour Le Mans race a year later.”
One of the paper models contained in the pages is of the Zlin 226 acrobatic airplane. The Czechoslovakian plane was one of Mollino’s prized possessions, decorated by the designer with distinctive yellow and black markings. The text itself is trilingual, each chapter printed in Italian, English and Czech. The 80-book run is equal parts history, paper engineering and tribute—a testament to the potential of print.
Three simple booklets bring wit, wordplay and graphic design shenanigans to the printed page
Boutique graphic design outfit User Design recently released a series of self-published works united by British wit and a simple, hand-drawn aesthetic. The titles include “The Journey of the Larks”, “Punctuation…?” and “Life”, and show an emerging playful side of the predominantly commercial publisher. Illustrated, designed and created by Thomas Bohm, the trio matches supremely minimal design with an endearing sense of play.
“Journey of the Larks” is a picture book that balances word play and illustration with clever “typographic shenanigans”. The themed spreads illustrate a range of inventive scenarios from “a wince of dentists” to “a lot of used car-dealers”. The standout pick of the bunch, Larks has plenty of charm to entertain children and adults alike.
The grammar-focused “Punctuation…?” is a non-traditional take on classic educational instruction booklets. While entirely informative, the illustrations for rules are executed with a splash of cheek and cleverness. Documenting the 21 most-used punctuation marks, the pamphlet runs the gamut from curly braces and interpuncts to pilcrows and guillemets.
The narrative tale “Life” is a picture book that records “one day in the life of somebody.” The roughly constructed story follows a character through his daily commute, the office grind and domestic life. While non-linear and difficult to decode at times, the account succeeds in demonstrating a kind of dadaist daily life.
User Design’s collection of books can be purchased through Amazon and Central Books starting at £8 or $12.80.
Creating book jacket covers in a hilarious TED talk from the seasoned designer
One of our favorite talks from TED this year, Chip Kidd delivers a great message in a most relaxed and humorous way. The talk, just posted online, reminds us about the importance of print in the digital age: “Much is to be gained by e-books: ease, convenience, portability,” explains Kidd. “But something is definitely lost: tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness, a little bit of humanity.”
Opening the session called, “The Design Studio,” co-curated by David Rockwell and Chee Pearlman, Kidd runs through his highly successful career at Alfred A. Knopff, from early efforts designing the jacket for Michael Crichton’s “Jurrassic Park” to Haruki Murakami’s most recent hit “1Q84”. Starting from the simple premise of giving a face to a mess of words, the challenge often breeds entertaining results. Kidd jokes about his work for David Sedaris’ “Naked”, saying, “For me, it was simply an excuse to design a book that you could literally take the pants off of.” The designer fully embraces the advantages of digital type, but understands that it has its limitations, most notably when it comes to the senses: “I am all for the iPad, but trust me—smelling it will get you nowhere!”
Art, antiques, books and more come together in Portland
Even on a street bustling with galleries and boutiques, Ampersand Gallery stands out. Owner Myles Haselhorst opened the intimate space in Portland, OR in 2008 to create, he says, something that “feels less like a retail store and more like the interior of someone’s home, someone who is a collector of art, books and found artifacts.”
Having collected vintage photography for about a decade, Haselhorst presents shows at Ampersand that range from the serenely beautiful, like a series of 19th-century hand-colored Japanese photographs, to the downright macabre. “There are billions of snapshots of cute babies, but it’s less often that you find a whole series of morgue photos that were shot in Hoboken, New Jersey, back in the 1930s,” Haselhorst said, referring to a show that he curated, framed and presented in 2010.
Ampersand also serves as a vintage bookshop and publishing house, whose works focus on photography and design and are arranged in between antique cases, custom-made furniture by Kerf Design in Seattle and rolling carts that were designed and built by Haselhorst and his father. The furniture serves as the perfect foundation for Haselhorst’s extensive collection, from a set of typeface archives to camping brochures from the 1960s.
At a time when most publishers are scrambling to reinvent their materials in all-electronic formats, Ampersand’s treasures offer a reminder that a beautifully printed and published book is an art object that you can hold in your hands. “In today’s economy, you have to stay on your toes,” Haselhorst said, “especially if you are selling books and art, which more and more are getting absorbed into the endless offerings on the Internet.”
Ampersand’s next exhibition, “Gazed Upon”, will open on 29 March 2012. Guest curated by photographer Amy Elkins, the show examines the questions of female beauty and self-identity and will feature work by Cara Phillips, Stacey Tyrell and Jen Davis. Head to the Ampersand online shop to see more of what’s in stock.
Linguistics presents a friendly face in this user’s guide to semiotics
Those who have tried to plough through the works of Ferdinand de Saussure or Jacques Derrida are likely to flee from anything with “semiotics” in the title—and with good reason. Without a significant amount of time and dedication, the field is nearly impenetrable. “This Means This, This Means That“, however, delivers on a promise to explain the obscure field of semiotics by way of example. Dedicating only one double-sided page per term, author Sean Hall has effectively distilled the essential vocabulary that underlies all semiotic thought.
The layout relies on a few apt examples rather than long-winded, technical explanations of linguistic terminology. Much in the way that John Berger’s famous “Ways of Seeing” series opened people’s eyes to visual language, this book challenges the reader to anticipate layers of meaning in common images. The Q&A layout engages readers to become more than simply receptive, teaching them to react rather than absorb. A simple question and an image conjure up associations and thought processes, and readers employ the tenets of semiotics as part of the experience.
Readers discover the role that cultural education plays in the way we understand representations in explanations throughout the book. You probably know more than you think, and Hall’s work has the added advantage of arming you with words like “paralanguage” and “intratextuality” to bust out at your next cocktail party. Those with a love of graphic design will find that a basic understanding of semiotics heightens their ability to read the layered texts of images.
The second edition of “This Means This, This Means That” releases 6 March 2012 and is available for pre-order from Amazon.
In 1985, Luke Ives Pontifall was your average high school overachiever—the kind of guy whose regular classes weren’t enough to keep him busy, so he sought more stimulating after-school activities. Born out of tedium Thornwillow Press is a small publisher that produces finely crafted, handmade, limited-edition books. What began in Pontifall’s parents’ proverbial basement now thrives in Newburgh, NY, a town just across the Hudson from Beacon, home of the Dia.
Down the street from George Washington’s Revolutionary War headquarters in Newburgh, a host of master craftsmen and engravers create custom monograms, ciphers, calling cards, bookplates, logos and coats of arms. Letterpress printers work on 24 antique and modern printing presses—the oldest press dating back to the 1800s—and the bindery still uses historic binding equipment.
Thornwillow is classic every sense of the word, from their approach to the collections they print. Their latest release is “Andrew Jackson: The Hero”, a selection of documents compiled by Wendell Garret, whom you might have seen appraising furniture on “Antiques Roadshow”. Thornwillow publishes plenty of presidential paraphernalia, like Barack Obama’s inaugural address, as well as poetry by James Merrill and short fiction by John Updike. They’ve also produced a $2,495 edition of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and a $13,000 alphabet of William Wegman’s dogs.
New Yorkers don’t have to travel out to Newburgh to browse their titles—they have a location tucked away at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan. The Thornwillow outpost blends in with the other reading rooms, and many regulars have been known to pass by several times on their way to get the famous Bloody Marys at the King Cole bar before discovering the offerings within. The Library Gallery at the St. Regis is a cozy 20′ x 20′ room open 24 hours a day. A librarian is available Tuesday – Saturdays and by appointment, but you can drop in any time, night or day, and browse luxe volumes like Fabrice Herrault’s $1,450 “New York City Portfolio” or the $685 copy of “Cinderella”, until you find something you like. Also for sale is a selection of box stationery, books, letter and paper desk accessories and one-of-a-kind antiques in the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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