Famous book designers. Hmn… Gutenberg? That Renaissance guy who did the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili? (Fair enough if you've not heard of that one.) Still, not many come to mind. Even in the introverted world of graphic design it's not like names come tripping off the tongue.
Why? Well designers generally like to design books, but not that many work on books all the time. The pay tends to be terrible! (Often I find when I tell people what I do they don't really understand what a book designer does – although I think that's because they're usually thinking of fiction. 'What, do you do the covers?' is usually how the conversation goes. 'Yes, sometimes. Mainly the insides. The whole thing.')
There is one famous book designer, though. She's Dutch and her name is Irma Boom. Early on in her career she was given the opportunity to design a book for a corporate executive who wanted to create a history of his company, SHV. In Boom's hands the book became 2,136 pages long, and took 5 years to design. It doesn't have an index, it works as a journey in which you discover things as you go along, mirroring the spirit of the company's director. It has a cool thing with the printed edges of the pages where if you hold it one way you see tulips, and if you hold it another you see a poem (something you can do if your book's going to be as thick as that).
Boom was lucky in that she found a client who was prepared to act more in the spirit of a patron, funding the project and giving her creative control. But what I like about her is that she just seems like the sort of person who won't do a job unless she can make something interesting of it, she sets her own boundaries. Every one of her books has some clever element that plays on the form of the book and the subject matter; there's always a dialogue. So it's no surprise that when it came to designing the catalogue for a retrospective of her work she chose to do something playful.
BOOM is a tiny book, about 6cm high, and contains an essay and numerous images of her work. When I first saw it I thought perhaps she was referencing miniature books – curiousities that have been printed and collected for 4,000 years. Maybe she was, but she also says that when she designs a book she makes a tiny mock-up version, just to check how it all works when you turn the pages. And she gets very attached to the little versions. So it seemed a good format to show her own work. And something very personal to her.
And it comes in a nicely designed box
A quick flick through 20 of her books here:
And if you want to know more about her process there's a little interview here in which she talks about her book on Sheila Hicks (judged by Leipzig book fair in 2007 to be the most beautiful book in the world)
Irma Boom on 'The Most Beautiful Book in the World' from D&AD on Vimeo.