A Book Is A Body
2016
Book Design
BOOK CONCEPT
It all started with a question, “What is a book?” To most, this could seem like a very simple question. A book is a book, filled with words to be read.
However, for me I had a different thought. A book is more than just a book. The first word that came to my mind when I asked myself that question was the word ‘body’. A book is like a body. It encompasses certain ideas. It contains content. Very often, we hear people talk about ‘body texts’ or ‘body paragraphs’. This got me thinking, is there a reason why parts of a book are named similar to our body anatomy?
A Body has an anatomy, a physical structure, including the bones, flesh, and organs, of a person or an animal.
A Body refers to consistency or density;
richness, substance.
A Body is a person.
A Body is a material object.
A Body has a soul.
A Book has an anatomy. It has a head, foot and a spine.
A Book has consistency, density, richness
and a certain thickness.
A Book is a person; it has a voice of its own.
A Book is a material object.
A Book has a soul. It is to be read
and experienced.
The book structure itself is like a body. It has a head, foot and a spine that holds the different parts together. Not only does it contain a body of texts, a book like a body, it has a soul and a voice of its own. A book is meant to communicate and it speaks for itself.
A body may also refer to the consistency of a substance. Like for example, a body of water. It is about the quality of a matter. Things like richness, density and thickness are qualities of a body. A book is rich in substance. A book has value. A book is not only a stack of pages with words, but the accumulation of wisdom, experiences and events from people’s mind.
Books are objects of words, each packaged in the traditional rectangular form. Once we have digested the information in a book, we place them on the shelves. That is when a book becomes an object. What we keep with us in our hearts and minds is the experience while reading the book. What we treasure is the essence of the book, the knowledge that was discovered while reading it.
A book like a body is a person. A book has its own personality and character. There is a certain style that a book goes about telling a story. A book is an individual; it has its own personal voice. A book is a person. Reading a book is like getting to know someone, it takes time and effort to understand.
Every body has a soul. A book has a soul. Within a book, it embodies a whole world of non-physical things like emotions, thoughts and feelings through words. These things are intangible, just like the soul of a person. The insights we gather after reading a good book, is like touching the soul of the book. Even after a book has been destroyed, its soul stays with us.
A book is not just a book. A book is a body.
DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION
The design of the book takes on the concept that the skin has three layers. The dust cover is like the skin, also known as epidermis. As you open up the book, the book cover is like the dermis, beneath the epidermis. It protects the insides of a book. The pages, which make up the text block, will be the deeper subcutaneous tissue, also known as the flesh.
The book consists of many pages of meat images between each chapter to give the idea that these pages are like the flesh of the body. They are the soft portion consisting of contents that are found between the skin and bones of a body. These pages encompass even smaller body of texts, which speaks an idea or tells a story.