Boom Book

What I learned

Bookbinding + condensing research

see Process

This French-fold book is essentially the Beginner’s Guide to Irma Boom, Dutch graphic designer and Queen of Books. Three hand-bound sections come packaged in a book sleeve the color of her signature lipstick, and tell her story through a brief biography, a deep dive into selected works, and a gallery displaying her artistic range.

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Section II, the largest of the three, discusses her most important works in chronological order. The layout and structure of this section is designed to create three different ways to read it: to flip through images of Boom’s work, turn the book upside down; to read key information about each project, keep the book right side up; and to read detailed description and breakdowns, turn the book sideways.

The continuous French-fold pages and changing orientation of the content made this project somewhat difficult to visualize digitally, which led to an extensive series of prototypes. These prototypes helped not only with typos and layout mistakes, but were also good practice for bookbinding methods, and allowed me to test the overall physicality and interactivity of the book from early stages all the way through to the final iteration.