no.
by armin
A mostly visual review of Marian Bantjes’ I Wonder by moi.
[On Amazon]
02.22.2011
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Like the rest of the design industry, I am a fan of Marian Bantjes’s bold and delicate graphic artistry so when she hinted she was doing a book that was not a monograph but some weird thing that she couldn’t quite describe, I knew it was going to be good.
A prototype of the cover went up on her site a few months before hitting the stands and it was barely an indication of how cool the actual product is. The cover’s artwork is foil stamped in gold and silver on black cloth (or a cloth-like substance) and the book just glitters like a rapper’s gold teeth in an alley. Yes, it’s that pimp.
The gold saturation continues inside as the book is printed in CMYK plus a gold spot color (this is an extravagant expense for a book publisher!) and Marian takes great advantage of that fifth, shimmery plate.
The contents of the book are a mixture of old and new writings — some of them originally published in our very own, and now defunct, Speak Up — that have been carefully crafted for the confines of the book using the structure and panache of illuminated scripts of yore, providing a consistent framework for deploying both classic typography and out-of-this-era lettering, patterns, and all sorts of graphically temperamental stylings.
I Wonder never, ever stops to let your eyeballs rest. It just keeps coming at you with page after dense page of visual stimulus. It’s like a mix tape that never, ever ends of the best of Metallica, Guns N Roses, Led Zeppelin, Spinal Tap (yes, that Spinal Tap), and perhaps some Pink Floyd while another tape plays classical music on your other ear. In other words, it rocks.
Below are plenty of images to demonstrate the above statements. Whether you plan to read it or not, I Wonder is worth its weight in gold. And this book is literally weighed by gold.
All photos by yours truly.
Marian was kind enough to share some process images of the magnificent pasta frames. Just in case you think they were Photoshopped.
many thanks to our adv @ underconsideration Partners