27 Feb The Paper Trail – Books & More
After receiving gorgeous printed materials in the mailbox, we then pulled some books off of our shelves and dusted them off to contemplate just how much goes into making them: paper weight, grain, color, size, composition, typeface cut, embossing, laser, applications, and so forth. We might forget it but it is also the carefully considered compromise of all these elements that make us want to pick up a book again and again. Of course subject matter has something to do with it but it can be sunk by presentation.
That wasn’t the case this week, filled with design catalogues, art books, cooks books, books on dance, theatre and fashion and age old tomes in stately book shelves.
We are stuck on one edition in particular; Pentagram Book 5, edited and introduced by Randall Rothenberg. The book examines the work of an international design consultancy and their process of interdisciplinary collaboration of product and graphic designers, architects used to answer difficult questions for their clients.
We thought: What if the client was people who love Florence? And what if the international design consultancy was made up of all those creative talents that live in and love Florence? Or maybe just love Florence from afar. And what if the difficult question was: How do we keep this beautiful place that fosters and inspires so much creativity and craft, relevant despite itself? How do we make sure that Florence does not sell herself short?
An intriguing question with answers that are full of prospect. That is the great thing about research, it helps you hone your ideas and find words to describe them by tapping into the experience of others. And of course, research leads to more research and, happily, in our case, more books. So if you do not see us out and about in Florence, then that means we are probably at the drawing board, hidden between stacks of big, beautiful books.