Reinventing the Look (even Smell) of a Book

From the International Herald Tribune:

When Irma Boom suggested designing a book in an unusually squat size and shape, it didn't go down well with the publisher. Nor did her insistence that it should have a white cover, raggedy page edges and an introductory essay printed in type that starts off big and becomes smaller on successive pages.
"It was a struggle," Boom recalled. "I was suggesting something very different to all of the other books they'd published. But they were courageous and, finally, let me do it." The result, "Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor," was published last year by Yale University Press to accompany an exhibition of Hicks's textiles at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. It has since won a shoal of design prizes, and on Friday is to be awarded the Gold Medal at the Leipzig Book Fair for "The Most Beautiful Book in the World."

Read the whole article here.