Book Design | Product Design
This project is aiming to explore the notion of what a book is. Its intention is to treat the book as a totality, not just as the medium for a text to be situated in.
It is trying to investigate the possibility for the book to be transformed into a new type of processor being considered and designed as an entity, where all the elements that structure it are equally important; and corporate to constitute and articulate its protogenic intention -the creators’ intention-.
Books should be regarded as living entities, as memeplexes. The ideas and the theories embosomed within a book, propagate through an assimilative process which is unique for every reader.On that premise the book itself should be a unique object (tool) for every reader, an object flexible to transform and adapt in every reader’s hands and needs (demands).
The reader has to direct the book in order to gain its essence and establish the appropriate reading mode for him or her through an action of construction as well as deconstruction of the book’s physicality. A reading mode more creative than the linear one dictated by the common book’s morphological and designing inertia, because it is a mode based on his or her authentic requirements. A reading rhythm that constantly changes, quickens, or slows down.
The final piece of this project is the poem “ONE TOSS OF THE DICE WILL NEVER ABOLISH CHANCE” by Stephan Mallarmé.
This is an effort to situate an English translation of Mallarmé’s swan song within a book structure, been designed for this particular poem.
A three dimensional structure where its physicality and spatial organization of the text are interacting inextricably, capturing the existential notions articulated within and throughout the poem.
This is an endeavour in providing the readers with the possibility to experience Mallarmé’s poem differently, by integrating physical action in their reading process using more than one of their sense organs, beyond the visual scrutinizing of the collection of types printed on surfaces of paper; an action that results in the metamorphosis of the book-poem, responsible for giving the reader a sense of intimacy and the enjoyment of creation.
Client : Personal Project, part of my Masters Thesis Project, Goldsmiths 2006