I just happened to stumble across the work of a man called Robert The, he studied in the Institute of Lettering and Design, Chicago and he is now creating sculptures out of second hand or scrap hard back books. His work is so amazing, and brings books alive making them into pieces of art. It is very hard to actually find any information on him and his work but he does have a pretty basic website here , if you are interested into looking into anymore of his work. His bio is a sentence long and the site just consists of previous exhibition dates and a handful of examples of his work. I wish there were more information on him but I suppose curiosity only adds to his charm!
He has created quite a lot of sculptures of guns out of book, how quirky would this be if it were incorporated into the design of a crime novel.
The beetle, is beautiful, you can see this appealing to kids, get them into reading!
A puzzle from books, this is captivating, really catches your intention. It completely confuses the brain.
It was created for the soul purpose of sculpture, but from a design perspective how great of a gimmick would this be for design, obviously altered so it wouldn’t disrupt the text, but if part of the cover came of to create a gun for a crime novel or an animal for an encyclopedia, it’s quite an inventive way of thinking.
That ‘Medium Is The Massage’ cut out gun is great, reminds me of those VHS tapes you got with a wee drawer to insert your tiny video camera tape into in order to watch it back on the tv, before you could tap the old wireless button.
If basics leading to curiosity are your thing, look at this site. It’s for a band called The Books. Impossible to navigate, but if you stick with it, you can stumble upon some real gems.
I love these designs they give a whole new perspective on what a book “should” look like. My favourite is the gun, i think these would definately encourage more people to start reading if the shape of the book visually shows them what the story is about first.