me studio

any regular readers will know that ‘irma boom’ already is highly ranked in my esteem as a book designer, possibly even the best there is… worldwide, her latest book is no exception, the large volume ‘foto vincent mentzel’ covering the long career of this respected dutch portrait and documentary photographer bears the signature ‘boom’ sober, (large sans serif) typographical cover (black & white in line with mentzels own ouevre) and the material choice/printing quality is as usual highly refined and warm to the touch…

the real trump card however here, is her image editing: such a large body of work can be ordered in a number of logical and legitimate ways, she chose the unusual, yet highly effective, route of grouping images in visual context (or similarity) instead, people standing in front of bookcases, people wearing suits, with hands clasped, the whole book is clustered in this way and once you have grasped this ‘visual storyline’ the viewing experience becomes even more rewarding, this choice naturally places people and events in close proximity that have in reality little or no formal connection, creating a new layer of information whilst smartly presenting the width and depth of the photographers career, yet without trying to hijack the subject of the book and imposing a superfluous layer of extra ‘design’ elements, very nice indeed…

the book has several cover image variations, in the amsterdam bookstore i visited, the version with an image of a chinese factory worker had sold out immediately whereas a queen beatrix cover version was as yet still untouched by customers… i thought they always say never judge a book by it’s cover…