Fuck Yeah, Book Arts!

Fully Booked: Ink On Paper by Gestalten

I’ll level with you here, we’re getting pretty tired of the print vs digital debate. We love the endless scroll and unbridled sharing of the internet just as much as we love the tactility and uniquely possessive nature of books. Can’t we all just get along here guys? Still, when Gestalten get in touch with news that they’re producing a volume dedicated to the very best in book design and print innovation it IS pretty tempting to tell digital where to shove it.

But we’d never stoop that low. We’d rather celebrate the arrival of this fresh new tome, Fully Booked: Ink On Paper, by telling you that it celebrates the very best of what print does well; foiling, debossing, Japanese binding, experimental print techniques, unique formats and really exceptional design. It’s reassuringly full of work by some of the finest practitioners and publishers in the world today, and as you’d expect from a work that wrestles with such weighty content, it’s beautifully designed too.

So enough of the squabbling everybody, print’s still going strong, but that doesn’t mean you have to set fire to your iPad; it’s much more exciting to live in a world in which we can celebrate books on the internet and glorify gadgets in print. (Source: itsnicethat.com)

archiemcphee:

This awesome device is a fully-functional Typewriter Arm Guard with Bluetooth and Touchpad created by Thomas Willeford of Brute Force Studios. The keyboard is mounted on an intricately tooled Steampunkish leather and brass arm guard.

Watch a video demonstration here. Then head over to Etsy to view more images and, if you’ve got $1200 to spare, perhaps even order one for yourself.

[via Technabob]

A short but moving documentary on a dying breed of artisans: featuring LA’s oldest printing press Aardvark Letterpress, and speciality paper shop McManus & Morgan.

thegetty:

Science and art have more in common than you might think. Here, lasers (!) are used to study pigment particles in illuminated manuscripts.

scribnerbooks:

In Toronto, a vending machine that sells random books for $2 apiece.

fer1972:

Lightleafs.

A leaf of light, thin as a page of a book, to enlighten rooms and tents, maps and books. Wireless, rechargeable, autonomous. With adjustable brightness, private or shared light, for those who read and travel everywhere.

USB Typewriters by Jack Zylklin

USB Typewriter offers a line of antique typewriters that also work as computer keyboards, as well as a DIY kit so that you can convert your own typewriter to USB! 

(Source: blip.tv)

collective-history:

The Writing Ball ca. 1865

The Hansen Writing Ball was invented in 1865 by the Rasmus Malling-Hansen.

The writing ball was first patented and entered production in 1870, and was the first commercially produced typewriter.

Is it just me or does this look like the greatest engagement ring ever? 

via

(via collectivehistory)

picturedept:

The Art of Google Books

Somewhere between medieval marginalia and the Google Street View based works of Jon Rafman and Doug Rickard lies The Art of Google Books.

The manuscript digitization process, along with the gestures of the scanning archivist’s hand, and the idiosynchracies of the printed page, can occasionally lead to strange and beautiful new images—”re-photographs” as described by Krissy Wilson, the creator of the blog.

The rephotography I am talking about is what happens when you take a photograph of a photograph — the idea that, were one to take a photo of the Mona Lisa, you would not have a copy of the Mona Lisa, but a photograph, authored by the photographer. I see the images produced by Google Books employees as photographs, in that sense.

The above is a selection of recent discoveries:
1. Marble paper endsheets, from the Bavarian State Library, digitized January 26, 2010.
2. “Poor scanning creates text whirlpool,” from Oxford University, digitized August 2, 2006.
3. Hand Transit, via microecos.
4. Extreme text-stretch, submitted by microscopic.
5. “Who is to blame (for this distortion)?” from the University of California, digitized July 13, 2007.
6. Armand Seguin, Les fleurs du mal, 1892, as found on the digital cover of Dario Gamboni’s Potential images: ambiguity and indeterminacy in modern art, via mythologyofblue.
7. Elaborately designed endpapers digitized in high contrast, from the University of Michigan, digitized May 29, 2007.
8. “Apparently the front and back cover of the book.” from the Bavarian State Library, digitized September 27, 2011.
9. Intermittent autolinking on the title page, from the Bavarian State Library, digitized February 6, 2012.
10. Aurora Borealis plate with neon color distortion, from the New York Public Library, digitized February 2, 2009.

To submit your own “unexpected peculiarities” found in Google Books, or to browse the archive beyond the above selection, visit theartofgooglebooks.tumblr.com.

(via bookron)

Carl Sagan (via olanthanide)