BIOGRAPHY IN BOOKS
Books in Reverse Chronological Order, 2010-1986
with Comments Here and There
Irma Boom
Irma Boom: BIOGRAPHY IN BOOKS [Books in Reverse Chronological Order, 2010-1986 with Comments Here and There]. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Bijzondere Collecties, 2010. First edition [3,200 copies]. Text in English. Decorated Publishers die-cut box housing a small, softcover booklet. 704 pp. 450 images. Designed by Irma Boom and Sonja Haller. Box lightly rubbed, booklet pristine, thus a nearly fine set.
4 x 5 cm booklet with 704 pages and 450 images, originally published to accompany the exhibition “Irma Boom: Biography in Books,” from June 4 to October 3 to at the University of Amsterdam Library. Book and package design by Irma Boom and Sonja Haller, text by Mathieu Lommen, and translated by transl. John A. Lane. Rem Koolhaas contributed the ‘Boom’ logo.
Offered here is the true first edition with a 4 x 5 cm trim size, not to be confused with the second edition titled “The Architecture of the Book” with a slightly larger 4.5 cm x 5.5 cm trim size. In 2010, Ms. Boom considered whether to print a second edition. “I might make it a bit bigger,” she said. “Maybe one centimeter higher for every print run?”
Alice Rawsthorn wrote about the origins of this booklet for the New York Times in August 2008. Here are excerpts from “A Small Book on a Big Career:”
Imagine that you’re one of the world’s best book designers — some say the best — and you have to design a book about your own work. How would you feel? Excited at having the freedom to do whatever you want? Daunted by that freedom? A bit of both?
What sort of book would you come up with? Whatever you’re thinking, I’ll bet that it doesn’t involve squeezing 704 pages into a “baby” book that’s roughly the same size as a small box of matches. Yet that’s what the Dutch book designer Irma Boom did with the book she created to accompany an exhibition of her work, “Irma Boom: Biography in Books,” which runs until Oct. 3 at the University of Amsterdam Library.
To be precise, she packed those 704 pages into a book that’s 2 inches high, 1.5 inches wide and 1 inch thick or, if you prefer metric measurements, 5 centimeters, 4 centimeters and 2.5 centimeters respectively. She bound the result in a bright red cover with the word “Boom” printed on the front in, intentionally, clumsy white letters.
When I first saw “Boom,” I presumed that its (lack of) size was a wry commentary on any or all of the following: a) the trend to produce very big, very blingy, often badly designed books; b) the realization that, since the microchip’s invention, the size of an object no longer necessarily bears any relation to its power; or c) the threat posed by Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle and other electronic readers to the traditional books that Ms. Boom designs so beautifully.
Wrong, wrong and wrong. “A lot of people have asked me about those things, but I didn’t think of them,” said Ms. Boom, laughing. “The book is small because whenever I make a book, I start by making a tiny one. Usually I make five, six or seven for each book, as filters for my ideas and to help me to see the structure clearly. I have hundreds of those small books, and am so fond of them. I’ve always wanted to make one for publication, but no one has ever wanted to do it. And I thought, well, this time, I can.”
Size excepted, Ms. Boom, 49, has designed most of her books just as she has wanted. Typically, a book designer works with the text and images selected by the editor and art director, but Ms. Boom prefers to combine all three roles by deciding on the book’s structure and choosing the themes and visual material herself. She then obsesses over every element — not just how the book will look, but how it will feel and smell — and invents ingenious ways of achieving the desired effects.
One of her books was printed on coffee filter paper. Another was scented to smell of soup. A monograph of the work of the Dutch artist Steven Aalders was made in the exact dimensions of one of his paintings. The page edges of a book on the American textile designer Sheila Hicks were hacked with a circular saw to evoke the fraying edges of her work. The title on the white linen cover of a history of the Dutch company SHV only becomes visible after frequent use. There are 2,136 pages in that book, but no page numbers, to encourage readers to dip in and out.
The page edges were trimmed to depict a field of tulips printed on them when read from left to right, and the words of a Dutch poem from right to left. When Ms. Boom was told that it would take 14 years to make her chosen paper, she invented her own.
Her subjects tend to get hooked on her approach. She worked for many years for De Appel, the contemporary art space in Amsterdam, and has had a long collaboration with the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas for whom she is now designing a book on Metabolism, the Japanese architectural movement. He designed the lettering on the cover of “Boom” as her visual identity.
Another live project is a book on the work of the Dutch product designer Hella Jongerius, which Ms. Boom has organized according to the color of her objects.
“Irma has her own method of working,” Ms. Jongerius said. “Sometimes she’ll be silent for a few weeks, then she studies intensely, concentrating on every detail. She took my book under her wing and looked at the full picture to make a clear translation of my work, something that’s very difficult to do yourself.”
Back to “Boom,” which features images from 226 of the books she has designed since leaving art school in the Dutch city of Enschede in 1985.
They appear in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent, “Al Manakh Contd.,” a collaboration with Mr. Koolhaas, and ending with her first book, a 1986 guide to Dutch museums. Ms. Boom designed it for the government printing office in The Hague, where she worked for five years after graduating, before opening her own studio in Amsterdam.
She has included comments on some of the books, which are printed in Plantin, one of her favorite typefaces, which is (just) legible at 5.5 points, roughly half the size of conventional book type. In one comment, she describes the “Sheila Hicks” book as “a kind of manifesto for books.” A second dismisses a book on Mecanoo’s architecture as “a failure for all involved.”
Ms. Boom reminisces about how the driver dispatched to take her to Ferrari’s headquarters asked her to choose between “fast or slow.” Duh! And she recounts how the late American artist Robert Rauschenberg thought her treatment of one of his paintings was “lousy.” “Of course, I included my mistakes,” she said. “You learn so much from them, and they’re always my fault. I could always have said no.”
“Boom” isn’t among them. The first edition of 3,200 copies has almost sold out and Ms. Boom is now considering whether to print a second edition. “I might make it a bit bigger,” she said. “Maybe one centimeter higher for every print run?”
Irma Boom [b. 1960] is an Amsterdam-based graphic designer specializing in book design. Her use of unfamiliar formats, materials, colors, structures, and typography make her books into visual and tactile experiences.
Boom studied graphic design at the AKI Art Academy in Enschede. After graduating she worked for five years at the Dutch Government Publishing and Printing Office in The Hague. In 1991 she founded Irma Boom Office, which works nationally and internationally in both the cultural and commercial sectors. Clients include the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Paul Fentener van Vlissingen (1941-2006), Inside Outside, Museum, Boijmans Van Beuningen, Zumtobel, Ferrari, Vitra International, NAi Publishers, United Nations and OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Koninklijke Tichelaar, and Camper.
Since 1992 Boom has been a critic at Yale University in the US and gives lectures and workshops worldwide. She has been the recipient of many awards for her book designs and was the youngest-ever laureate to receive the prestigious Gutenberg prize for her complete oeuvre. Her design for ‘Weaving as Metaphor’ by American artist Sheila Hicks was awarded 'The Most Beautiful Book in the World’ at the Leipzig Book Fair. Her books have been shown at numerous international exhibitions and are also represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.