Customer Reviews

Fully Booked: Cover Art and Design for Books

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4 star:		(2)
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Cultural commentators frequently write about the potential decline of books in the digital age and they might be right as far as literature is concerned. The arrival of the Sony Reader, Amazon's Kindle and other electronic readers could mean that today's young grow up reading literature on anything other than paper. Perhaps not so easy to present visual books in an electronic format but I expect it will come but what can't be digitized is the feel of a book: the weight, texture of quality paper, pictures printed in four color with a varnish fifth printing, binding and even the aroma gives a bound book something special. Can you hear them say "Open me!"

The editors of Fully Booked like to create the impression that books are alive and well though I thought the message was rather diluted because so many of the wonderful examples shown exist as just one copy. These artists and designers have used the medium of bound paper to create works of Art rather than beautiful examples of art run of in hundreds or thousands of copies and available to a wide audience.

Whether it's one copy or thousands there is no doubt that the pages display some quite amazing and fascinating creativity on paper. Is there one example that sums it all up? For me that would be `Your Home' by Olafur Eliasson, a nine hundred page oversize book that features various cross-sections of a house which have been laser cut into the pages so that you physically pass through the building as the pages are turned.

Other intriguing books include Susanna Berkenheger's `Time for the Bomb' which has large die-cut holes punched through many of its two hundred pages though it does seem that these eliminate lots of text. Robert The creates art by using books as objects like a gun shape stamped out from a novel, Jason Salavon cleverly uses an IKEA 2007 catalogue minus the photos and text so all that is left are 374 pages of the background color panels (yours for $500) Tank Books had the neat idea of publishing classics that fit inside flip-top cartons with clever packaging design that combines the author and title in cigarette-box style graphics.

Fully Booked is a visual feast of one edition books and others published in many copies but it is unfortunate that the book's production takes on some of the experimental design that is apparent in many of the titles illustrated. For a start the book is printed in two sections, look through the first 141 pages and then you'll have to turn the book over to look at the other 121 pages. I can't see any reason for this other than designer whimsy! There are two contributor essays filling sixteen pages throughout the book, none of them have page numbers even though one essay refers to another by page number. The illustrations are keyed to the captions with numerals set a five point light face so you'll have problems reading these in a domestic lighting environment. The middle of the book has a ten page designer index and oddly the book's imprint is part of this. All of this suggests to me that the publishers seem rather unprofessional in the way they present information to book buyers.

Apart from the lapse in some of the editorial production (so four stars) Fully Booked will amaze anyone interested in contemporary book creativity.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

A beautiful product of design and creativity. A very inspiring book for any book maker, designer, or artist. Great contemporary samples.

This is a great resource for creatives on book design. It's full of artistic and different ideas.

WOW. What a great book from already great publishers. Where else to turn to for good inspiration? I regularly troll design websites and magazines, but there's nothing like holding in your hands truly creative and modern ideas, from use of color to paper craft to sculptures disguised as books and so on.

My only issue with the book is that it's extremely heavy, as the paper appears to be of a heavier matte.

The latest in contemporary design in the areas of color, graphics, typography, and within the requirements of a definition of a book, shape are applied to the design of books by more than 260 book designers, commercial artists, and graphic designers from European countries and some from the U.S.

The styles range from understated, almost muted (as when pastels are used) to classical-like for their sense of order to striking to chaotic so one can not get any coherent sense of subject and has to figure out wording on one's own. No matter what style, however, each book has some expert, innovative, or imaginative touch or technique to distinguish it.

This large catalog illustrated with several color photographs on each spread of facing pages itself employs the innovative, rarely used technique of half the text aligned in one direction and the other half aligned in the opposite direction (as sometimes seen with the texts in two different languages in a bilingual edition of a book). Samples of the book design of the numerous artists range from a couple of six or so.

The covers of the books are like product packaging, not the routine, familiar look of the large majority of books in a bookstore or library. Some of the most interesting are covers for classics and major authors whose books remain in print over the years. These book covers can be compared with ones of past editions so that this contemporary interpretation of the particular book by graphics, images, etc., can be especially appreciated. Such covers of books by Tolstoy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Robert Louis Stevenson can get one to thinking about them in new ways. Many of the covers are engaging for their play of elements, sometimes to the point of interactivity. The cover for a book No Smoking is like a pack of cigarettes which has to be opened for the book to be drawn out. The wittiness and liveliness of many of the covers is exemplified by a design with two round eyes on the top cover and a tongue sticking out from the page edges.

It is in the inner pages of the books though where the greater degrees of innovation are seen. Not only is formatting varied by composition, typography, and graphics, but in some instances the shape customarily associated with a book (i. e., the page) is transformed to the limits. Some pages are folded to make particular sections or to contain particular material within books, sometimes with folds within folds. Some more complex fold-outs are like origami.

Not only book designers, but graphic designers, product designers, and commercial artists of all types would get sources and ideas from the hundreds of clear, detailed photographs.

This book is so full of brilliant ideas. I couldnt manage more than 5/6 pages before being flooded with inspiration. Very strong concepts very well executed.