
Irma Boom: Biography in Books

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.
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.
In fact, it is a homage to the “mini-books” she makes whenever she starts work on a new product. They act as filters for her ideas, and help her to see the structure. As it costs nearly as much to produce a small book as a big one, no publisher had ever allowed Boom to produce a “real” book on this scale, and she seized her chance to do so with her own book. It is a beautiful thing, which proves decisively that big isn’t always better for books or anything else. Although future editions may be a little bit bigger than the original, because Boom has suggested to the publisher that each new version of the book should be roughly half an inch larger than its predecessor.
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Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing
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Edited by Michael Merrill
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Published: October 2021
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By Harriet Pattison
Publisher: Yale University Press
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An intimate glimpse into the professional and romantic relationship between Harriet Pattison and the renowned architect Louis Kahn. Harriet Pattison, FASLA, is a distinguished landscape architect. She was Louis Kahn’s romantic partner from 1959 to 1974, and his collaborator on the landscapes of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, and the F.D.R. Memorial/Four Freedoms Park, New York. She is the mother of their son, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn.
Reading Graphic Design History: Image, Text, and Context by David Raizman
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By David Raizman
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An innovative approach to graphic design that uses a series of key artifacts from the history of print culture in light of their specific historical contexts. It encourages the reader to look carefully and critically at print advertising, illustration, posters, magazine art direction, and typography, often addressing issues of class, race, and gender.
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Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: September 2020
A comprehensive overview of the work and legacy of David King (1943–2016), whose fascinating career bridged journalism, graphic design, photography, and collecting. King launched his career at Britain’s Sunday Times Magazine in the 1960s, starting as a designer and later branching out into image-led journalism, blending political activism with his design work.
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