So here I am at Frankfurt with eyes slightly crossed and head buzzing after a day looking at every conceivable kind of illustrated book. If you haven't been to the Frankfurt Book Fair (and why wouldn't you? Start planning that holiday now) it's hard to describe. It's huge – like the London one at Earl's Court (not been there either? What's wrong with you?) but MUCH bigger, spanning 9 giant convention halls.
It is just enormous, so much so that there is a fleet of shuttle buses to get people around. You also see the local Frankfurt kids who come as dressed as their online avatars hanging around the comic book hall, or the film & media centre.
They love to pose!
I had a brief look at work's stand in the international publishers' hall; it looked very smart. All the Frankfurt dummies that we've all been working so hard on these past few weeks are tucked away in a secret room round the back so that other publishers can't see what's in the works. It's all pretty business-like; people making deals, buying & selling co-edition rights for the following year.
The main interest for me was hall 4, the art-book hall, where I headed off to spend the day. Too many beautiful books to post here. Tiny ones
Ones that I wanted to steal: I got told off for photographing it, so had to leave off documenting
every page – but trust me, this is one beautiful book. Lovely binding,
interesting subject-matter, beautifully printed, gorgeous mix of paper
stocks and print techniques, lovely typography… One thing I saw a lot
of this time was books with different sizes of paper used throughout.
Like here the sketchbook pages are smaller than the rest. It instantly
makes a book seem more interesting, I think. But I guess it's
significantly more expensive when it comes to printing / binding.
Books with nice work in
Ones that I just liked the look of (that's not my thumbprint, by the way).
So was it worth going? I'd say yes, definitely. There's nowhere else where you get to see books from so many different publishers around the globe all collected together in one place. It really is amazing how much there is to see. Anyway, have a look at my flickr set if you want more.
Every year a different country is guest of honour at the fair; this year it was China – which seemed kind of odd to me given that they spent so long suppressing freedom of speech & the work of their writers and artists. It just seems strange suddenly to be seeing these things as if they have always been there, when in fact it's such a recent phenomena. Hmn, I'm not articulating this very well. But I had the feeling that in 10 years time we might all be familiar with Chinese visual culture in the same way that we are, say, with Japanese. And that the Chinese are busy defining it & catching up on all that lost time.
There were lots of Chinese books dotted around the fair, and a
pavilion where there was a themed exhibition. I liked the book walls
that they made
The show began with ancient items that used script, and followed through to a large display of e-book readers. It's the first time I've actually had a play with one
It was ok. The screen / paper thing is quite cool. It seemed a bit clunky to me, but if you're just reading text I think it would be perfectly fine. Did seem a bit limited, though, after all those gorgeous illustrated books. I think fiction publishers might have cause to be worried, but I can't see this replacing the kinds of books I spent the day looking at.
