(bright music) (audience chattering) - [Announcer] Welcome, everyone, to the "Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series."

(audience applauding) - Welcome to the "Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series."

My name is Chrisstina Hamilton, the series director, and today we present to you a treasure of international acclaim, the "Queen of Books," Irma Boom.

A big thank you to our supporters: Design Core of Detroit, the U-M Libraries, and the Ann Arbor District Library.

And, of course, our series partners: Detroit "PBS", "PBS" Books, WNET, All Arts, and Michigan Public 91.7 FM.

Before we get started, we have some folks in the house that I wanna introduce to you and welcome in our midst.

We have with us the Stamps School's Dean's Advisory Council.

Very important group of folks.

These folks are with us.

They are alumni from the school who have graduated and gone off and found great success in their lives.

And the greatest thing for us is that they're willing to come back and spend time with us and give back and help guide our school and our dean with their knowledge.

And we appreciate them so much for their dedication and their time.

And look at them students as beacons of engagement and giving back, and someday, you can do this too.

Speaking of students, I wanna make everyone aware there are many different independent student exhibitions brewing about.

The student members of the student-led exhibitions committee have an opening on Friday from four to six at the Stamps Gallery Atrium for Arbor Glyph.

So you can join them, and that show will be up through the 16th of November.

Next week here, we do celebrate Halloween, and we'll have a special event where we host Emil Ferris with her two volumes of "My Favorite Thing is Monsters," and I encourage all of you to come in costume.

We're gonna make something fun out of it.

So we got art school students, you've gotta have great costumes, come on.

Alright, reminder to silence your cell phones.

Take a break from technology.

We are going to have a Q&A today.

You'll see that there are microphones on stands at the end of the two aisles here.

When we get to that moment at the end of Irma's presentation, come down if you have a question, line up at the two microphones.

We're gonna have a very brief Q&A, briefer, I shouldn't say, briefer Q&A today because we also are gonna have a moment, if anyone here in the audience is already a very lucky person and happens to own an Irma Boom book, we will have a moment with Irma in the lobby after the program to sign books.

We also, if you don't have a book or haven't seen her books and held her books, we have Jamie Vander Broek from the museum, from the U-M Libraries, sorry, has brought books with her from the library's collection.

And so there will be a bunch of books so you can actually hold these things in your hand, which makes a big difference.

And now for a few words on our illustrious guest.

Irma Boom, commonly referred, as I said, to as the "Queen of Books," is a book maker based in Amsterdam.

She redefines the boundaries of book design with her bold, experimental approach.

She was educated in fine art and graphic design and began her career at the Dutch Government Publishing and Printing Office before she founded the Irma Boom Office in 1991.

She has a portfolio of over 500 books.

She seamlessly blends design and editorial work, challenging traditional conventions in both physical form and printed content.

She makes use of various fabrication processes in her printed material such as embossing and die cuts.

She also does wild things like using scent as another unusual feature.

She's also utilizes innovative materials such as coffee filter paper.

Her innovative designs have earned her numerous accolades, including the prestigious Gutenberg Prize, making her the youngest ever laureate.

Her works are part of the permanent collections of institutions such as MoMA in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Her complete oeuvre and archive are preserved in the Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam, and in 2014, she received the illustrious Johannes Vermeer Award.

This is the official Dutch state prize for the arts.

She was awarded this by the Minister of Education, of Culture, Education and Science.

The jury unanimously awarded Boom for her unparalleled achievements in the field of graphic design.

And she's also an honorary Doctor of the Royal College of London for her inexhaustible contribution to books.

Irma is going to begin this evening with a reading of her "Manifesto for the Book."

So please welcome, Irma Boom.

(audience applauding) - Hello, good evening.

So I do start with a reading.

It's not so long, so be patient.

But it's important to know what my thoughts on books are.

So I read it now and very welcome, of course.

I went in '79 to art school to become a painter.

I had this romantic idea of the lonely artist working in the studio, but it didn't work for me.

I needed a collaborator, a commissioner who triggers me.

I was trying different disciplines.

And then I met this amazing teacher who gave talks about books.

Why poetry books are small, reciting literature, explaining typography.

I fell in love and kept attending his classes, and I became a book designer.

Making books is time consuming, but incredibly fascinating.

It is something I want to spend on almost all my time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You could call it obsessive.

I am obsessed with the printed book.

The book has a physical object.

The possibilities and impossibilities that it offers are so challenging and so thrilling that I can hardly understand why not everyone shares this essential excitement.

The literal making, the material of the book, the inventions, the search for new structures is addictive.

I want to search constantly within the limited resources of industrial printing and binding for that which is specific to the subject of that book.

Books, a respected traditional book, but I don't want to let myself be limited by it.

I want to develop further both the meaning and importance of the book.

The insights and structures which originated in new media has given the printed book a new impetus.

It is important to experiment freely without fear of failure or being restrained by technique in order to maintain the vitality of the book and, above all, to take it further.

The intrinsic elements of the book ever since the beginning of bookmaking hardly changed.

Edited text and images printed on paper and bound in a certain quantity and distributed.

It is with these limited ingredients or tools, I try to discover what is possible and overcome the impossibilities.

Many times, I'm challenged to defend the book, which I do not think the book needs at all.

After 600 years, it has proven one of the most stable media, whether it's still right to exist.

I suggest that precisely in this age of internet, haste and superficiality, the book brings delay and depths.

That's just one of the great qualities of the book.

Often, at conferences, I'm the only one who brings books, objects.

I feel like a dinosaur in a place where, on the contrary, everyone wants to be very modern.

Martin (indistinct) Had a wonderful quote.

He talked about BC, before computer, and AC, after computer.

Digital books are often seen as a potential threat to the printed book or analog book, but I believe that the real threat to books lies in the fact that people are reading less, or at least much less, a development that may be influenced by the internet.

However, the internet has also spurred new trends in printed books, shifting from a traditional linear structure to books that readers can navigate like a website.

During my ongoing study in Rome at the Vatican Library, titled, "What Happened to the Book?"

I realized that the book is not intended for the past or present, but for the future.

The unchangeable, static, or frozen content, in contrast with the dynamic flux of the internet, gives rise to the reflection and encourages further investigation.

A book as a container of thoughts.

Already in the 15th century, publishers and printers were complaining about effect: people read less.

A new form for the book was developed: the pocketbook.

Easy to print, not so expensive to produce, and easy to carry around.

Print runs rose enormously from 300 books up to 3000.

The democracy of the book.

Collaboration.

I always use the term commissioner, not client, because I think of my work being commissioned, a collaboration on equal terms, very important.

Through an intensive collaboration with the commissioner, author, artist, or architect, each book is specific.

The solution to the design is often already hidden in the content.

With a strong focus on the content and the dialogue, the outcome, the design, is a logical consequence.

Making books is a joint effort.

Without synergy, there can be no energy, and without energy, any project is doomed to fail.

Doubts.

Making books will never become routine for me.

The eternal question for me is whether a book is good enough.

Changing things until the last moment, even when the presses are are running, I will do anything to make the book hopefully better.

It can always be better.

When I started as a designer, I thought that this feeling meant ignorance or incapacity, but now I see this doubt as a benefit.

It leads to a delay in doing, so, creating space to think.

It is a quest for perfection.

A quest that I will probably never complete, and maybe the imperfection itself is beauty.

Trust and freedom.

Mutual trust is essential in a collaborative process.

Trust is essential because I'm aware there are times when I might keep commissions waiting.

During these moments, I'm in the incubation phase, searching for inspiration in complete silence, temporarily unresponsive to emails, but then as soon as the idea is there, there's no stopping it.

Trust creates freedom.

Freedom gives responsibility.

Freedom and trust are ultimately two of the most important principles in my way of working.

It can also happen that when I receive a call for an assignment, I immediately have the idea or the design in my head.

I can imagine the book completely, but through the eternal doubt, I often leave it there for a while and I go and make models, mini sized and full sized.

And I keep it a little while for myself.

Ultimately, working on a commission is about a mutual desire to create something, something specific for that particular topic.

Authorship, the Dutch stamped yearbooks from 1988.

I have the copy with me here.

Were the first books in which I did image editing in collaboration with the author Paul Hefting.

The term image editing in the context of a design at that time.

So that's 36 years ago.

It's you, you're not even 36, I guess in the audience, was quite unusual.

For me, this way of working meant a change to never work again.

Again, according to the old established principles.

So-called authorship has become self-evident in my practice.

Criticism.

What do you do about criticisms or com comments about your work?

The most shocking experience I had was in '89 with the jury report of the Best Book Designs, a quote report concerning my very first award ever.

And that's again the Stamp books which I have here on on the table.

So I quote undoubtedly, many of those interested in the background of Dutch stamps have canceled their subscription to the series following this publication.

As practical reference books, these barely legible publications largely missed the mark.

Text printed over each other, the absence of hyphenation, the large set, opening words of new phrases, sometimes changing into irregular font size mid syllable.

The pagination starting at random points.

It all differs very much from the typographic pattern books provided as reference.

The main reason for the jury to proceed regardless with crowning this achievement is the fact that the climate for book design has apparently arisen in the Netherlands that makes such experiments possible.

That they fail is unfortunate.

But the client and the publisher of this much discussed series deserve praise for their daring.

They don't praise me for daring to make something else.

They praise the fucking commissioner.

(audience laughing) Which does not mean that there have not been large risk in the area of accessibility and readability.

I hate this jury report.

That the text run up to even or over the edges of the pages is perhaps symbolic of the jury's final conclusion.

This is an experiment that goes over the edge, so it failed, but it's a brilliant failure.

I don't say the F word again, but I when I, because I know it's very rude.

When I read this, I thought I could not show my face on the street.

I thought that designers who get award are famous, but on the contrary, were not famous at all.

Football players are famous or Taylor Swift, but not a graphic designer or even a book designer.

But I thought also, I said, I'll read it again.

When I read this, I thought I could not show my face on the street or I would be pillared.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

The jury report ensured that I acquired the reputation for the kind of things that many commissioners were hungry for, something risky, something new.

In retrospect, I'm so grateful to the author, his words were provocative and challenged me to investigate the phenomenon of the book further and to embark on further experimentation.

So in a way, if you get negative reviews on your work that is better for you than to get positive reviews.

That's what I experienced.

So the more negative they write, the more interesting commissioners you get.

It's really interesting.

Recently via Twitter and American critic called my work aggressively simple.

I can identify with that.

Library.

A library is a place where a collection of books is brought together in a composed collection.

I was this afternoon with Jamie and she has a wonderful collection.

We had a wonderful discussion, so I encourage you all to go there.

Libraries have existed since humans began writing, and there was a need to keep and sharing text.

I'm creating a library.

There's already a basis of books from the 15th and 16th century to the Avant garde books of the 1960s.

So the books from the 15th century are incredibly beautiful, more experimental than the books I've made.

And I think if people criticize my book like the stamp books because I'm experimental, then look at the incurables.

They are experimental.

My books are nothing.

So also books from the sixties.

If you put those two areas together, it's really exciting how they combine very well there.

So in the 15th or 16th century, the book had to be invented and how a book was made in the structures of books.

And in the sixties, so after the boring fifties, we had an enormous freedom.

And then again, there was a sort of eyeopener, how you can make books.

Okay, but I want to have a discussion in my library.

Some of my own books will be part of this library and almost ready, the need for the book's intimacy, the paper, the smell of ink is certainly not nostalgia or false sentiment, because sometimes people say, oh, you're so outdated because you're like, you're making books.

I think making books like I already mentioned, is the most stable medium.

And I think we, until the end of time, we will have books.

Even if you see a science fiction film, there's always a book in a science fiction film.

So they always refer in the end to a book.

But the book is certainly not nostalgia or false sentiment.

The printed book is a fundamental and integral part of our tradition and culture of published and public knowledge and wisdom.

Will the book survive?

We are at the beginning of the renaissance of the book, and that's so far my statement.

And I always say the book is that long live the book.

But now we go to something else, to another part of the lecture.

So, and what I basically, it's so, because I don't want re routine normally I always show books with a camera and show the live books.

But this time I thought I showed a catalog of my work and that this tiny book and I need to show you the book because the PDF for me is not a book, a book because a PDF do doesn't show you the scale or the thickness or the the smell or the thinness of the paper.

So that's why I need to show you the real book.

And this book is called "The Manifesto for the Book".

And that's because of the Sheila Hicks book.

So the Sheila Hicks book, maybe some of you know it, it is a very simple book I made for the American artist Sheila Hicks, who lives in Paris.

And this book revamped her her career.

And so a book is also a tool.

So these two books are very important to me.

Okay, now, to the, I wanted to again say the F word, but I should not.

Because a PDF for me is really something dead and not so exciting.

And I can tell you this book has a thousand pages and I'm sure going to show you all thousand pages, but it's very fast because the book is in reverse chronological order.

It's from 22 to 85.

And and this is also the first time I started to write a text.

This book was made for a show I had at in Amsterdam, at the Allard Pierson Museum, at the museum in Amsterdam and also at the Vatican Library.

And what I really like to show is not a final book because the final book basically you can buy in a shop.

So I really like to show models.

So, the show, the three shows were all about showing models.

So how I make a book.

So the things you see here, the "Viktor and Rolf" book for Dutch fashion designers is a book, which is, I could also not make on the computer.

It's a book which only has covers and covers.

So I, so the models are very important to see and to make an exhibition with models I think is much more exciting.

And when I, why I also want to show the PDF because in this book, I also show a part of my study at the Vatican Library.

And when I started studying at the Vatican Library, there was in 2018, I was basically asked to become a resident at the American Academy in Rome as a Dutch person.

So that's very special, I think, I was really happy.

But then I thought, what should I, what should I do at the American Academy?

I had this large studio and I thought, well, if you're staying in Rome, it's the city of the book and the city of the of libraries.

So I went to beautiful libraries, to Casanatense to Hertziana, and Angelica are the most beautiful books, libraries.

But then somebody at the American Academy, an American lady said to me, you need to go to the Vatican Library.

And I said, why?

She said, when after she saw my books, she said, you'll find your friends there in the library.

And so my book friends.

And so I applied there and I was interviewed if I, because I'm not a scholar, I didn't do university, I did art school.

And so I had to prove that I'm okay.

And then I said, I'm already teaching 32 years at Yale University in New Haven.

I'm a guest at lecturer at Harvard.

I go to Cornell and et cetera.

And this said, oh, okay, you get, you may go 10 times to visit our library.

So fantastic, of course.

And then I thought, well, if I have this 10 sort of ticket to go 10 times in into the Vatican City, because that's the whole thing.

You have to enter Vatican City, you have to show your passport and then ahead, I think you have to show seven times who you are in, before entering the library.

And I thought I go there from nine to five exactly the whole day until the bell rings.

So I visited the manuscripti and stumpati.

So everything, because I wanted to find out what happened to the book because the book was so experimental in its beginning.

And basically because of marketing reasons, we always have to have a cover that sells or it should not be too heavy, or it should heavy, or a book should be a coffee table real book, which I hate or, and all that kind of stuff.

And so I wanted to find out what happened.

So, I researched, I was with my, and you see I'm wearing wooden shoes and also I always have my wooden shoes on.

And also in the library, in the Vatican Library, there's a wooden floor.

And I would, if I would go walking from one library to the other, people really got annoyed because it made so much noise.

So in the end, after a few weeks, they started to complain about me, the people from the library, the priest and every, and who else is there.

And so I had to come and visit the Cardinal who was the head of the library.

And because they said she has to go out, she's really a disturbing person, and she's looking at 20 books at one time, a scholar looks only at one book for three months.

So it was really outcast.

And so at some point, and I had to see the Cardinal, and I also thought, oh, they throw me out because I'm not doing it according to the rules.

But then I met the Cardenal Mendoza, and it was, it was very funny.

We immediately had a clique.

He's a poet, a Portuguese poet, and you, we, for some reason, sometimes that happened that you, some somebody can be an enemy, but somebody can also immediately be a friend.

That happened with the meeting the Cardenal.

And so we were talking and I said that I'm, I know that I'm the only designer bookmaker studying at the Vatican Library.

And that I want to study from my perspective, the book, not a part of the book, but the book as a whole, because that's also if I make a book, I make a book as a whole.

And then the first, one of the first things he asked, what is your favorite book so far, you have seen in the library.

And I said, Galileo, that's what you see here.

And you know, Galileo was imprisoned by the Roman Catholic Church because he said something else in, Aristotle, he said, the earth is going around to sun.

And according to the Catholic church, it was the other way around.

So I thought, oh, stupid, stupid answer.

I will be thrown out.

And then I, and then he says, and what brings you to Rome?

And then I said, the young Pope, do you know the young Pope?

That's a beautiful series about a pope.

And it's talking about all the things which go wrong in a Roman Catholic church.

And I thought, oh, again, a wrong answer.

Oh, now he knows that I should go, I should go.

And then he said, but again, what is your relation to the Roman Catholic Church?

And basically I wanted to say nothing, but I am Irma Elizabeth Francisca Maria.

And that made it all happen.

(audience laughing) But I think the Galileo book for me was important because Galileo wanted to print his evidence that the earth is going around to sun in a book.

He wanted, imagine if it was oral, if it was only by memory, it was different.

But he desperately wanted to have it printed as quick as possible.

That's why for me, this book is in the beginning of my book.

So I already told this story, so I go quickly past it.

Sometimes I have a show and then I show my books in a very superficial way, only is showing it by color and by dimension.

And that's what I did in 2013.

I write here, you see again some models of of the Margiela book, Marta Margiela and "The Countryside" I did with Rem Koolhaas.

And I think it's really nice to, as I said before, to show how I make books.

I really, I don't make a book on the screen.

I make a book real size and at a hundred percent scale.

And during the process, I make smaller versions of a book.

But I don't make a book on the computer, but literally a book in a book.

So, I cut pages, I make models, dummy sizes, and then I will cut and paste.

And I think then you do inventions.

If you're a bookmaker, you make books not on the screen because the screen is flat and the in design is going vertically and the book is horizontally.

I think why should, is in design not in this direction instead of this direction?

I don't understand.

So for me, the sequence of making a book is really important.

It's the rhythm of the book.

I also had an interesting thing when I made a book for about Mondrian and for the Beyeler Foundation.

Here's a typo, it should be be Beyeler in Basel.

And they said it was about Mondrian Evolution, but nobody knows Mondrian like he's shown here.

But I thought it was very intriguing to see this portrait of Mondrian.

Mondrian had his portrait made when he hired a room to show his works in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in the contemporary museum.

And I thought it was interesting.

Everybody have Mondrian.

He's the man of the red, yellow, and blue.

But he was very self-conscious man, and he really knew how to present himself.

So for his show in the Stedelijk like he had this portrait made.

So I thought it would be interesting to have that portrait.

He liked himself to have it on the cover of the book.

They didn't like it in at the Beyelers.

And then he says, well, the book is anyway in progress, but I tell you I will put it in my small book.

And then I said, just, it's in progress.

And then we see what cover we end up, and then they said, woo, you're very convinced of it that you want to have this portrait.

So they said, let's do it.

So very nice.

I see myself as holding plates in the air, like this circus man.

And because I never work on one book, I work on many books at once, I have this tiny office with two assistants, and we work on 15 to 20 books a year.

And I really like production because it, if you produce, you develop, if you only make one book, of course you can go in depth.

My Vatican book will take maybe 10 years, but because I also do all the content, but sometimes I think it's also good to, if you have a good idea, you can go fast.

And here you see, I think of my work as being commissioned by commissioners rather than by clients in collaboration on equal terms in freedom and trust.

That's, for me, the most important.

And what you see here is the book on the on the left.

And so what my idea about this book is, so I started with a tiny book.

It was really half the size almost.

And I think because it's my catalog and I have to become better, I follow the Japanese, that you have to become better.

Like Hokusai was drawing 'The Wave" and he was drawing and drawing and drawing to make the end ultimate drawing.

And that's how I see my work.

I have to become better.

And every year the book grows 3%, and if I become hundred, the book will have this size.

So I really hope I will manage to get that old.

But basically, so next year I have an exhibition in Tokyo, in Japan, and then it'll be five millimeters higher and 1500 pages.

So the book is always growing not only in in height, but also in thickness because I make so many books.

I don't show every book, but it's more because a thousand pages is a lot.

I work, I did a book with Martin Margiela, I also say that I work with somebody or don't work for somebody.

It's really a collaborative thing.

And completely, this book is basically a dummy, the dummy is the book.

The book is the dummy.

And this, I used his post its to identify the 19 projects of Margiela.

Margiela was known as a fashion designer, but since 10 years he's an artist.

But you can see that being a fashion designer and an artist is for him almost the same.

It's all about the same ideas and attitude.

And these post its, which were in the dummy, we finally also used in the final book.

So in the final book, you see these, these post its at the edges, and there you can find all the different projects.

And what is nice about this book, if you buy it, it is very, the post-its are very bright and clean, but the more you use it, they, they fade.

It's, there are real post-Its, and I think that is is very specific for Margiela.

It is very, yeah.

So how do you say this sort of unconventional, because how can you make a book with post-its?

But we did, I think 10,000 copies with hand glued post-its in it were produced.

It's the first book which went into reprint after the opening of the show.

So at the same night in Paris did it for, made it, we made it for Anticipation in Paris because Martin had a show there and the books sold so well.

So the 5,000 copies almost sold out that same evening.

So they decided to make a reprint immediately.

And for me, it's very important that a book has a print written.

The so-called artist book with an edition of 10 or or 15 doesn't interest me at all.

It is all about craft.

And I am about, I loved industrial process.

For me it is, a book is is about sharing information and it is about, yeah, that you spread and share information.

Yeah, if you compare it like architecture, I like to make social housing and not villa.

And I think that the small additions of artist books are sort of villas and basically it is a piece of art.

Yeah, you can of course discuss what is a book, but for me a book is when you share.

And so more, the larger the print run, the better.

Another, what is nice about this book for an artist Steven Aalders is that his work is, is super precise and there's a binding system that it's called the Flat Book, where you can have, you can place images over the gutter and it doesn't hurt it, there is basically no gutter because it is a spread, it is glued, all the pages are glued together, all the spreads, and the book falls open very beautifully.

And so I thought it was very good to do this for this artist.

Come where this book is very precise and super minimalist.

The book for Ray Johnson for the Art Institute of Chicago is complete different.

Here, the design is exactly as I found all the material in the binders.

So the basic material for this most, the most famous unknown artist of New York.

So everybody knows Ray Johnson, but not really.

He was in the circle of Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol, everybody knows, but Ray Johnson, nobody knows.

But anyway, the, the work of Ray Johnson was, especially the mill art projects were collected in binders.

And I used exactly the position of the material found in the binders in the book.

And that's also what I like about making books that I design as less as possible.

That more that the content is presented, the best and the most intrinsic and true to the content.

So the less I do, the better it is.

And that is also happening here.

I just place it as I found it.

And sometimes it's a bit tilted.

I think no caption in this book is placed zero degrees.

It's all in a little bit in an angle.

And it's a lot of work, of course, because it basically a replica almost.

But then of course in book design, and when the curators and the editors of the book collected all the material, I went to twice to Chicago to look at the material of Ray Johnson.

They, I saw, they didn't select a lot of beautiful graphic work.

And I asked if I can make (indistinct) with the works I love.

And they, and I made 10 with more graphic side of the work of Ray Johnson.

So there was very kind to that they let me do this.

And I'm always working with the editors from the very beginning.

It's basically, no, it never happens that people call me.

We have text, we have images.

Can you make a book that is out of the question.

And also for me, totally uninteresting.

Here you see my office and my two assistants, Anna from Italy, and Freddy, Frederick, from Germany.

So, and we sit sometimes with an assistant, but this is the, the whole office.

And on the left you see how I am making this book.

So I'm selecting material for the manifesto.

And you see also Angela Davis because I'm a huge fan of her.

And I call myself a book activist.

And for seeing her all the every day makes me aware that I have to do this.

Yeah, maybe very briefly about Neri Oxman.

I love the Whole Earth catalog and the design of this book is a little bit based and inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog.

So a lot of images on the page and very playful, almost like a, like a catalog for a, where you can buy things.

And it's also for me, a new way of looking at it.

But I thought it was in also good for, to represent the work of Neri Oxman.

It was a catalog for the MoMA.

Remko has also wrote a text.

And he wrote a text because I made "The Countryside" book with him.

And when I was doing my research at the Vatican Library, I was also looking what happened first, the first color print, the first this, the first that, and I was also looking for the first pocket book.

And the first pocket book was published in 1501.

And the content of this pocketbook is so by Aldus Manutius in Venice is (indistinct) on the countryside.

And at the same moment I found this book in the Vatican.

I was also working with Rem on this exhibition "Countryside" in the Guggenheim in New York.

And so I thought, well, that would be a nice size for the catalog.

And then Rem immediately liked the idea that we have a reference to a book in the Vatican and to the first printed pocket book.

And, but at the Guggenheim, they were not immediately happy with it because they always have these coffee table books, these really, these catalogs.

And so they said, we don't like it.

We want to have a big book, not a tiny book, because the pocket book is almost this size, so it's not really big.

But then I said, what is, when I told them the story about my founding in the Vatican library, they said, yeah, that's too good to be true, so let's do it.

And then when "The Countryside" show opened, it was in 2020.

The show was only open two weeks.

And then we had Corona, we had Covid.

So the museum had to close.

But the good thing was that the book became the ambassador for the exhibition.

So the book was sold all over the world.

So the book represented the exhibition.

Is it already green?

Ah, my God, I have to then, oh, that's, wait, is it really?

Ah, I have to go fast.

And I then I simply show some books.

Books have beautiful edges.

I like to structure books.

Alan Gray, Steve McQueen, I go very fast, a book for Thomas Demand.

He said, Thomas Demand said, a German artist send me every day a flower.

And he asked me to make a book out of it.

And then I thought, if you send me every day a flower, then I make a calendar.

So I made a daily calendar for him.

So it's the daily flower report.

And it has holes in it, so you can always see from one day to the other.

And I skipped this one.

This is the cover for a book of Rembrandt.

And Rembrandt is very brown and it is all brown, brown.

But if you look at is etchings, you see that he almost, it looks if he almost used, if he made etchings with a Bic pen.

So I made his etchings in blue and I thought the Rijks Museum would never agree with that, but they did.

Look how beautiful it is.

It's a completely new perspective on Rembrandt.

And this is a self portrait of him.

It's tiny like a postage stamp.

And I think it's amazing how, yeah, how friendly he looks.

I also have, when I got my honorary doctorate, I had a, I asked all these questions and here I say that, well, I just go fast.

So the elements, you simply, no, the book you cannot buy anymore.

It's sold out, but I will make a new one.

Number four, this book I did with Remko for the Venice (indistinct).

it's a super fat book, Rem made SML excel with Bruce Mao.

I made another book, a much fatter book in '96 for a company.

But we thought together we want to make a much fatter book.

So now from now on, we never make fat books anymore because we are both known for huge books.

And since this, we did it, we, this book is 2,550 pages.

It's an enormous book on this very, very thin paper.

And we worked on it for six years.

I also do logos.

I did this.

So this is the book for Viktor and Rolf.

I was their teacher.

And the book is called "Cover, Cover".

And the book only shows covers because clothing is cover.

It's making, it's covering your body.

And so I decided to make a book only with no content, only their clothing, everything is inverted.

All the images, all the final fashion is you never see in the real color, only their first, their initial drawings are in the same color.

The rest is all inverted.

And this is how the book looks.

So it is a pile of paper stitched together and then folded.

So you can make endless combinations how to look at the book.

And it's really a very interactive book.

And you really get the idea of what Viktor and Rolf did.

Yeah, another book, another book, another book, another book.

There's so many books.

This is a book What makes sounds, sound, it's a book for the royal library.

Everything in the Holland is royal.

We have a king.

So it's all the royal library, the royal printing, the royal this, royal that.

So this book is about a mutilated books, books which were so old and totally like you see on the image on the right, bottom right, that they, you cannot open them anymore.

And if you open them, they make this enormous sound.

And so I made a book.

They photographed all these books before they opened the books because the content they photographed.

And so you can now find this content of these books online, but I made a book about the mutilated forms that is really a terrible state.

And so if you open my book, because of all the the die cuts, it makes a sound.

It really makes the sound if you damage the book.

And it's really a sort of miracle.

This is a book about one work of Kelly.

I love the work of Ellsworth Kelly so much.

And I own this small piece and I made a book with 1200 pages on my own paper.

I have IBO paper, which you all can order, and it is a little bit shiny through.

And it is, so I use that one work and I gave the work colors and put the shape of Kelly upside down.

And in all this kind of shapes.

This book has 1200 pages and no spread is the same.

And so it's all the time.

It's a different take on the work of Kelly.

Of course, I asked permission at the Kelly Foundation, and in the book there is a facsimile of the Kelly work.

This is one of my favorite art collectors, Seth Siegelaub.

He was a, he collected books.

He was the first in New York who showed the work of Lawrence Wiener, (indistinct) and Carl Andre.

So he had this avant garde gallery.

I think it started in his house that is set.

And on the left, right, is Sir Germano Celant, which is a very important, was a very important curator.

This is a book I did for Renault, and Renault is a car company.

If you talk about social housing, this is a very social car because it's not so expensive.

I worked for Ferrari and Maserati, but it was a lot of fun to work for Renault.

The book is completely printed on aluminum, and so it's very heavy if you have it in your hands.

And it tells the story about cars, not only about Renault, but what a car is in film, in our lives, how car smells, et cetera, et cetera.

And it was a very experimental thing.

And what for me was also a reason to work for Renault because the logo of Renault was de designed by Victor Vasarely, the French Hungarian artist, a very beautiful work.

This is a book for the president of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

And they asked me to make a book about his speeches, but I thought it was so boring, a book with 36 speeches, very beautiful German language, super beautiful.

And I thought, I want to do something with his language.

So I made a lot of, I forgot how many indices, 30 indices of his words, the words he used.

And, and that became something really interesting.

So it became a complete, basically inside out book.

So even on the edges, you, what you normally see in the spine of a book are placed on the edges of the book.

And and this is the result.

It is, it was, it took me 10 years to make this book, to have a computer digest what I was asking.

Here, you see a few books of my own library, of course Kelly and Liechtenstein.

And I made a book for Olafur Eliasson, okay, let's go, let's go, go, go, go, go.

This is for Jamie.

This is the book you need to have in your library from the (indistinct) Museum with my library.

You see me at the bottom left.

I was on the front page of the "New York Times" that I started a library.

So I thought it was super nice.

This is the library under construction.

I read a lot of text in this book and oh yeah, this is also a nice book I, not nice, but a special book.

This book is completely white.

It is a book for a private collector.

And you don't see any text.

It's all, it's all white.

And only if you do foldout, you see his private collection.

So I thought if his collection is so private, let's make a private book.

So it's a very experimental, very white book.

The thing is, it's also one of my favorites.

This I skip.

Here, I'm giving a talk at Columbia with Rem about elements of architecture.

The book started as 15 small books and later we made a thick book.

But this you, these small books you could buy and two other assistants.

Again, a German Yulia and Japanese Akiko at the office.

And I always write these statements.

So I, so because of the making this this book, I started writing and I found out that writing was very important to articulate what I actually think about books.

And for me it was very good to not only talk about books, but to put it down in words.

This is a sky diary I made for Issey Miyake.

It's a book for a color hunter of Issey Miyake.

One year long he collected the colors of the sky.

And so I made a book, a book with 12 spines.

And on the cover on the spine, it's a sky diary, but it's a very intriguing book.

We have a lot of tabs and all with color codes.

And I can show this book on a PDF.

I cannot bring it because it's super heavy.

But here you see the beautiful 12 spines.

It's one of my favorites.

Yes, I also work a lot for fashion houses, like for Chanel.

This is a completely white book on the perfume number five, which I'm of course wearing today.

I wear it already since I'm 14.

And so when Chanel came to me, I basically immediately had the idea, I want to make something what is invisible, yet very present.

So I had like a perfume.

You smell the Chanel five, but you don't see it.

And I thought that's how I want to make this book.

And the book is made only with embossing.

So there is no ink.

So it's the ultimate book.

The book doesn't exist basically as a PDF, it's completely white.

So it's, and because it's all embossed, I couldn't, the book could not be cut after it was made.

So I had to made it, make it on the size of the book.

So that's why the edges are very rough.

A book about thousand and one Dutch women.

Another book I did with Rem about Metro Metropolis architect in Japan.

Okay, let's go fast.

Oh, this book I need to show because this is the architecture of the book.

And when Remko has saw this, he saw this book on the table.

He said, this book is architecture.

And then I thought, okay, so my next book is called "The Architecture of the Book".

Because books are a sort of architecture.

They're three dimensional.

I have to see where I can find this.

It's also a nice book.

It's "Reading the American Landscape".

It contains 50,000 images and it's, you could leaf, you can leaf through this book and see all these images of 20 different photographers who traveled through America and took all these amazing photographs.

Of course, more Vatican and more Prada, book for the Prada Foundation.

This is "The Everything Design Book", a book which I was commissioned to make a book with 148 pages.

But then the, everything, the design museum in Zurich has already a million objects, I think.

And I thought, I want to show how that the book itself already is thick.

That you see, if you see the object that it's a lot.

So not a thin book.

You need to have a thick book.

And they were shocked when I showed this proposal.

And they said, well, we love it and we really want to do this book, but we only pay you for 148 pages and not for the 864 pages.

And I said, deal, I don't care.

And for me, it's more important to execute an idea then to have an idea in my head.

So the execution of ideas is very important.

And every book I make have an idea.

I I don't think I design a book.

I have an idea, I have a concept what I want, and that's what I'm doing.

This book is an art piece in itself because together with Daan Van Golden, a Dutch artist, I made this book as a piece you can put on the wall, but it also has art pieces.

How do you it organized by color?

It's a book with eight colors.

So red, blue, green, and you name it every color.

And in this book, in in this red book, I highlight words, which I think are interesting for me.

And that that you yeah, to basically to direct a book.

I also think that as a designer bookmaker, I prefer to call myself that, I'm like a film director or a conductor.

I want to direct how people look at a book and how you read a text.

So it's really, yeah, that's of course the editing and the Sheila Hicks book, so the manifesto for the book I have with me, and I will donate it to Chrisstina, who invited me here to to your, for this lecture.

So it's for her.

And then I don't have to carry it back.

(audience laughing) Because books are super heavy.

So the book has, maybe she gives me five more minutes.

So the book has this rough edge, which is, is like the salvage of Sheila's work.

So the, if you make a weaving, the salvage is very important.

And so I made the edge of the book, like an image rhyme to her work.

And also the text of Danto is placed super big in this book.

And Danto was a very important American critic living in New York.

And when I made his book, he was still alive.

And "Yale Press" was totally against me using texts.

Basically they thought as image, they said Arthur Danto will never want to have this text so big because if you turn the pages, the the text become smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until you have a normal size.

And for me, it was important to do this because Danto describes how important textile is in our society.

It's the first thing which protected us.

And it's a wonderful piece about yeah, the importance of textile in our culture and how political it is.

And so I really wanted to have this and like type set and they said, no Arthur Danto won't like it.

And I said, at that time, is he still alive?

(audience laughing) And they said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I said, well, I don't like assumptions.

Nobody, we should not have assumptions.

Let's ask Danto himself.

And this is what he wrote.

I read my text through once more last evening and felt it enhanced by it's graphic embodiment, the topography and the sculptured edges of the pages.

So he really liked it.

And so I got it done.

And I can tell you, I am standing here, I made more than 500 books.

But for me, every book is basically a torture because every time people think that I don't follow the rules of what a book is.

And I'm so happy with my study in the Vatican and see all these experimental books after Gutenberg.

So the first sort of incurables, they're so beautiful and so incredibly experimental that my books are basically, yeah, just a rip off of that idea.

And so I'm not that I'm convinced of what I'm making, but for me it helps that I have more knowledge than most of my commissioners who want to have a book, like the other books.

But if you come to me, you get a very specific book.

I don't give you a generic book.

You get a specific book, especially made for your topic.

What I also like to show is that I worked with Rem Koolhaas on many competition books also for CCTV.

And because Rem at that time still is traveling a lot, we always communicated via fax how I should do the sequence or how we could show the building in its best way.

And I think this is so beautiful, it's so outdated.

Now, I don't get faxes from him anymore.

We communicate via scan or a photo, but this I think is a, is an enormous treasure to have all this, this communication, how to make a book with him.

I said I did a renewal book, but I also worked for Ferrari 2T inventory, Ferrari, all the Ferrari engines.

I thought it was incredibly nice to do.

At that time, I had never driven in a sports car.

And when they picked me up in Bologna at the airport, they said, we pick you up.

And they said, well, where do I find you?

They said, we make a noise.

We make a sound.

So when I left the airport building, I heard room, vroom, vroom.

And so I knew I had to go to that car.

And then the, and then the Italian guy didn't speak any English.

Only he could say fast or slow.

(audience laughing) Of course I said fast, very nice.

And this is my old office, which was a complete mess.

There was only one thing where I could see a path to my desk.

This is a book for inside outside.

It has, it's a company which does literally inside curtains and outside gardens.

And this book, you can flip from one way to the other.

If you flip it one side, it's all curtains.

And if you do it the other side, it has the landscapes.

But there's always a connection because there are holes in the book.

This book has a smell.

This book I made for a designer who didn't like it in the end.

He said, it's your book and not my book.

Said, that's correct, because I made it for you.

And this happens if you ask a designer to make a book because otherwise everybody could do it.

So we had a huge discussion.

The text was so awful written that I made the text like footnotes.

So there's no distinction between type size in footnotes and in the plain text.

Book for Vitra.

Of course, I already was into the Pope.

Then I met Pope now twice.

He's a very kind man.

The red light is there, but I cannot, I have to show the last book.

So I'm almost there.

This is the huge book I did Young Pen upon artist story.

And I worked for five years on this book called "SHV Think Book".

It's a book with which was made on a pivotal moment from analog to digital.

We wanted to make a a CD rom, but technique was so slow at that time that we decided this is all the corrections that we decided to make a book based on the internet.

And that was for us much more interesting.

So this, if we had decided then to make a CD Rom, probably a week after it was released, it would be outdated because in the beginning of the nineties, technique went so fast.

So, we are very happy we made the book because the book still looks, if it was made today, it's very unfashionable.

And so that's, it's another plea for printed matter.

It's printed on cotton paper, which will stay for the next 500 years, the same.

The book only contains questions.

It's also made in reverse chronological order.

And every question is a case study of this for this company.

The company is called Trading Company.

And, but the CEO of the company was a very philosophical man.

He's on the top right.

And the, the question of course is more important than the answer.

And so this whole book is full of questions.

We made it in Chinese and in and in English.

So I go fast now thin book for art center, me as a young girl, the book on coffee filter paper, which Chrisstina mentioned.

This is the best book catalog I made after this horrible jury report in the previous catalog.

This is an annual report on color.

This book is printed in yellow, red, and blue.

And so I used the colors to distinguish different elements in the book.

And the book, and you can make with yellow, red, and blue seven color combinations.

And this, the seven departments there, the text divided in seven parts, chapters, is divided by these color combinations you can make with yellow, red, and blue.

So this is all before computer and it was only an A4 written.

So the stamp books, so the stamp books, which basically gave me my fame, if you can talk about fame, because they were so experimental.

Even in '88 when I made them, they were experimental.

But still now, if people see it, they say that you make these books.

Already in '88 when I was working on books, I made mini books.

I always make mini books.

And so I was basically crucified for these books.

But if, yeah, and I thought what I said that I could never show my face on the street again.

But nothing was further from the truth.

Nobody knows a book designer.

I'm very much into these books.

I find find in the library.

I think what is nice about this book, and this is also the way I work, if you have a content, if you have an idea, then the design makes itself.

So this, the small text in this book in from 1522 is that the, the big, the small text is a comment on the small text.

And so you see that all these beautiful things happen, happens on the pages.

It's so the small text is a comment on the bigger text.

And I also made a carpet out of the book.

Why not?

And I think we're almost there, because this is the end.

I'm surprised as how fast I can do it.

I also made a MiFi '94 piece.

I made a coin.

I do a lot of other things.

This is also a book I think the library should get.

I made a pass tunnel with 17,000 tiles.

So, if you have an idea, you don't have to make books only, you can also do other things, of course.

But I want to, I have a Citroen DS, I'm driving that, and here you see me as an angry young girl and this is the last page of every book, every read book always ends with the quote from Charles Baudelaire.

It says, (speaking in a foreign language) and it means inspiration is working every day.

Thank you very much.

(audience applauding) - Amazing.

I'm gonna change up what I said we were gonna do just a touch, because, I did give you more time.

I did give you much more time.

So we're only gonna have time.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna say, let's do two questions because you're here.

And do we have one person over there.

Maybe I'm gonna say we do two questions and then, because Irma has books that you can actually put in your hands and look at and feel.

And because I know there are some of you here that are lucky enough to own an Irma Boom book, we will instead after we do two questions, we're going to then convene in the lobby.

And if you had more questions you can talk to Irma yourself there.

- All okay.

But thank you all for coming.

That was amazing.

Very nice.

Thank you very much.

(audience applauding) So, because basically I'm a designer.

So take these two.

- Okay.

- And then we'll then come off stage.

- Okay.

- Can you hear me?

- Yeah.

- [Sam] Okay, cool.

Hi, my name is Sam.

This is really strange.

I feel weirdly connected to this presentation because I did like a semester in Dutch studies and then I did a semester, I'm taking a book arts class right now as a stamp student.

- But what's your question?

- [Sam] My question is that, what do you feel are the limits?

- I'm very Dutch, very direct.

- [Sam] That's okay.

That's good.

That's where you get places.

What do you feel is like the limits of bookmaking?

Do you feel like there's a place?

- I don't think there's a limit, but I don't like crazy books.

I like books which are basically normal books.

And I think that because of the limitation of the whole idea of the book, I think to find ways which are keeping the book idea, the printed book vital.

That's a search, it's a study.

And I don't think there's an end.

- No, oh, okay, that's fine.

- No, no end at all.

- Well thank you.

- Keep making.

- Yes.

- We should keep making books.

- Thank you so much.

- Okay.

- [Audience Member] Hi, so you mentioned that whenever you finish a book, you never really feel like it's done.

Like you always feel like you can keep working on it.

What kind of advice do you have for artists who have that same sense of like perfectionism?

- Yeah, but I think that for me, a book is never done.

And I can tell you if a book is made, I'm always disappointed.

It is always a big disappointment and I always think I do have to do the next.

So to keep going to make it better.

That's why also my mini book grows.

I think it has to become always better.

It's never, I'm really very disappointed, always with the outcome.

Very, and and don't stop, always continue.

I think that's what I can say.

Never stop.

- Thank you.

Any other question?

(audience applauding) (audience chattering)