Irma Boom: Biography in Books

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Irma Boom

Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam with Grafische Cultuurstichting, Amsterdam, 2010, English

Nonfiction, Product/Industrial Design

ISBN: 9789490895013

Irma Boom has become one of the most widely renowned and laureated book designers in the world today. Her often ingenious solutions to individual book productions have gained her international fame and her work is now collected by many leading museums such as the MoMa in New York. Besides book designs she also creates corporate identities, postage stamps and posters. The special collections of the University of Amsterdam library will honor Irma Boom with a major retrospective exhibition of her work. Her studio archive was donated to the library in 2003. To accompany this exhibition she produced an exceptional catalogue; this miniature book (1.5 X 2 inches) contains a complete overview of her work, with commentary and more than 450 full color illustrations in 704 pages with printed edges. Published in correlation with the exhibition at the Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam library.

Also see Irma Boom: The Architecture of the Book.

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Alice Rawsthorn

On Alice Rawsthorn’s Book List

This is one of my favorite examples of a book as an extraordinary object. It is the first book on the work of the brilliant Dutch book designer Irma Boom. There are 704 pages bound into a tiny book—just 2 inches high, 1.5 inches wide, and 1 inch thick. When I first saw it, I presumed that the (lack of) size was a wry commentary on any or all of the following: a) the trend to produce very big, very blingy, often badly designed books; b) the realization that, since the microchip’s invention, the size of an object no longer necessarily bears any relation to its power; or c) the threat posed by the iPad, Kindle, and other electronic readers to the traditional books that Irma Boom has designed so beautifully. . . . View the complete text

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