Hasta La Ideas

Last year, Jonathan Safran Foer’s die-cut novel Tree of Codes proved to be a triumph of print and production from publishers, Visual Editions. They recently released a short film showing some of the processes that went into making this unique book…

The die-cut technique is central to Safran Foer’s novel. In it he creates a new story from cutting text out of an existing work, namely Bruno Schulz’s The Street of Crocodiles (a favourite book of Safran Foer’s).

To create Tree of Codes each page featured a different die-cut. Visual Editions worked with Die Keure in Belgium to produce the book, having been turned down by every other printer they approached – frequently with claims of “this book can’t be made” ringing in their ears.

So here’s a little film about what happens when you decide to make an extremely unusual book: one that despite the odds, can indeed be made. More on the book itself, here and The Trees of Codes’ microsite is here.

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