Nineteen Eighty-Four

Having recently fallen asleep whilst attempting a late-night viewing of the film adaptation of this influential and undoubtedly timeless novel, I decided to give it a read for the very first time. Written in 1949, the book conveys author George Orwell's grim vision of the world in 1984: a society denied of free will, privacy or truth, crippled under the rule of a brutally totalitarian regime.

I had not previously realised just how far-reaching and culturally influential '1984' really was. Indeed, the year 1984 may have passed, but the themes discussed in this timeless novel are as relevant as ever. Below I have posted a video of Apple's classic advert from 1984, which announced the launch of the Macintosh, alongside a spin-off dealing with the recent democratic election battle between Clinton and Obama in the US.





Cheesy political videos aside, the book is also responsible for a slew of references across a plethora of media - including radio, television, popular music, film, video games and comics, not to mention a wide range of other books. Though not directly design related this book has been a real eye-opener and has proved a true source of inspiration for me.

The bittersweet art of cutting up books

Via Dark Roasted Blend.




















Image: Peggy Dembicer












Image: Georgie Russell

Image: Cara Barer

I'm the type of person who gets irritated when people deface books, if only by writing or annotating inside them (let alone destroying them) but some of these creations are stunning. And I suppose that with the ever-increasing digital saving of printed materials, the deconstruction of books to create such works of art becomes more and more acceptable to me.

Also check out the work of Matthew Hall.

The Codex Seraphinianus

Following on from my previous post discussing creative 'books', I had a closer look at one of those mentioned on Dark Roasted Blend - the bizarre and mysterious 'Codex Seraphinianus'.













Written by Italian architect and designer Luigi Serafini over thirty months between 1976-78, the book is approximately 360 pages long and is by all estimates appears to be an encyclopedia of an unknown, almost alien world. The language in which the book is written is remains totally undeciphered; but not through lack of trying - linguists have analysed it for decades without success. The Codex is often described as the 'weirdest book in the world'.

The Codex is divided into eleven chapters, partitioned into two sections. The first section appears to describe the natural world, dealing with flora, fauna, and physics. The second deals with the humanities, the various aspects of human life: clothing, history, cuisine, architecture and so on. Each chapter seems to treat a general encyclopedic topic.

Graphically, the illustrations are often surreal parodies of things in our world: bleeding fruit; a plant that grows into roughly the shape of a chair and is subsequently made into one; and a lovemaking couple that metamorphoses into a crocodile. Others depict odd, apparently senseless machines, often with a fragile appearance, kept together by tiny filaments. There are also illustrations readily recognisable as maps or human faces. On the other hand, especially in the 'physics' chapter, many images look almost completely abstract. Practically all figures are brightly coloured and rich in detail.
































































Amazon.com has a copy of the Codex on sale for a mere $550, as does Internet Bookshop Italia for just €8,900 ($12,500?). Tempting.

Creative 'books'

In spite of the constant increase in availability of online books, it's safe to say most people still prefer to read by leafing through actual pages instead of scrolling down a computer screen; experiencing a 'real' book is undoubtedly more personal than staring a rectangle of cold, lifeless pixels - for the forseeable future at least. And even though I've been guilty of using online resources on hundreds of occasions, I nevertheless hope that books as we know them - more or less - will weather the current technological maelstrom and re-emerge at the other end.

The images below, while they all exist mainly for the purpose of art and are mostly very difficult to actually read, show some really creative examples of publishing. Some of them are so wildly modified that they would be better described as pieces of art that were once books - something that I'm actually a little unsure about since I absolutely hate the idea of books being thrown away or defaced.



















































































































More here.