Month: June 2011

Interview with Nate Burgos Rare Book Feast

Nate Burgos is the author, designer and driving force behine Rare Book Feast, a newly released video series about the timeless character of books. His first installment, Herbert Bayer's Book of Maps can be found HERE

Detail of Herbert Bayer's “World Geo-Graphic Atlas” (1953). Photograph by Joe Giovenco.

I contacted Nate and asked to interview him for this blog. He kindly consented and here is that interview:

1. Please tell us what inspired you to begin your project Rare Book Feast?
Curiosity was the start and I cherish the design of books. I’ve been telling myself, and others: What’s the use of collecting if it isn’t shared?

2. Are you a book collector?
Yes, though not an expert. I covet and collect specific rare books because they’re beautiful and rare.

3. If so – what area do you focus on?
Stemming from my schooling and job, I’m attracted to books made by people, mostly designers, who paid attention to both the material and its design—both inside and out—like the covers, how the spreads present themselves as they’re revealed, especially the typography—its grid, layout and detail, like ligatures and hanging punctuation. Book design and culture-focused blogs like Shawn Hazen’s “Book Worship” and Dan Wagstaff’s “The Casual Optimist” further nurture this fascination.

4. How do you select which book you will “Feast” on?
Since “Rare Book Feast” has thankfully made its debut, I don’t yet have a method to pick which book from my collection (or elsewhere) to highlight and share, and I may not come up with one. I chose to kick-off the series with the “World Geo-Graphic Atlas” for a number of reasons: it’s a book I’ve been sharing here and there with people, mostly design schools; it’s a stunning work filled with a lot of visual interest—high bar of craft realized here; and it has a direct connection to one of my teachers and mentors, John Massey, who became the Director of Design at the Container Corporation of America in Chicago where he met Herbert Bayer around 1957.

5. Are you an avid reader? In what area?
The last physical book I finished was Hugh MacLeod’s “Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination” (highly recommended). The next book to be in my hands is Gary Vaynerchuk’s “The Thank You Economy”. Both of these titles are under the category of “Business” but I wish to get back to reading fiction (and claiming that reading fiction is useless is nonsense).

Most of my reading is sporadic from site to site on the internet. I also enjoy listening to shows like those by Austin-based 5by5 Studios which cover topics like web design, typography and DIY-making.

6. Would you tell us a bit about your creative life?
Beyond my job, “Design Feast” is my passion project, a growing webliography of design. Related projects grew outward from here. I enjoy writing about anyone and anything which interest me on my design-related blog, an all-people-and-things-considered destination. Then there’s tweeting, lots of it. Twitter is newsprint. Designer Lorraine Wild said, “You have to be interested in culture to design for it.”

7. Have you worked on any other book related projects? If so, where may we see them?
How people articulate design and creativity from their angle interests me a lot. I self-published “Thought Leadership by Design” through Lulu. I encourage anyone, who wants to make and release a book, to try services like this. The site for this book turned into the blog, “Design Thought Leader”, where I curate and post quotes which I find insightful on a range of topics, from creativity to work.

“Thought Leadership by Design” self-published by Nate Burgos. Photograph by Michelle Litvin.

8. Would you give us some hints about what to anticipate from the Rare Book Feast?
To be determined. At this time, I’m toggling between a delightful children’s book “Sparkle and Spin” (1957) by Ann (words) and Paul Rand (pictures) or the ambitious “Design Methods” (1970) by John Chris Jones. Both are first editions. One of my friends, who is also a freelance client and shares a passion for rare books, mentioned that he has one printed by the Aldine Press—wow!

9. What reaction have you had regarding the first installment of the series? I noticed lots of chatter on the web about the project.
I’m super thankful and appreciative for all of the viewers, like you, who enjoyed the mini-film, in addition to all of the people who helped spread the word about the first installment. In particular, its feature at “swissmiss”, the personal visual archive and popular design journal of Tina Roth Eisenberg, stimulated an overwhelming interest from everywhere. It’s wonderful to see the ever-enduring interest in the beauty of printed matter. “Print is dead?” Bullcrap!

10. I notice that you are a design professional. What area of design do you focus on?
Most of the projects I work on are web-based. I completed a recent project which was the creation of a user-interface design pattern library for an eCommerce site. I try to be an agnostic when it comes to the type of project. Designer and author Paul Rand, a teacher of mine, said, “Design is everything.” Here’s to finding out the breadth and depth of this statement.

11. Would you give us an outline of your education and background?
My undergrad was in graphic design. For grad school, I went to the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Day-to-day, I’m a designer for the “Fortune 5,000,000”, an awesome term (and awesome class of businesses) I discovered from a blog piece by Chicago-based webapp maker 37signals.

12. How do you anticipate this project will impact your design work?
In her piece about the first installment of “Rare Book Feast” in “The Atlantic”, Maria Popova, who founded and sustains “Brain Pickings”, a “discovery engine for interestingness”, emphasized “the remarkable intellectual and creative enrichment available to us from early design history and the creative problem-solving of eras past.” I share this “deep belief”, as Popova put it. I recall my courses about the history of design, including issues in design, taught by Professor Emeritus Victor Margolin of design history and criticism. Those courses were eye-openers. Lots of legacy to tap into and channel, somehow, into one’s thinking and rethinking about design and designing. From a wonderful excerpt of their essay called “Collecting History”, Brooklyn-based design office Kind Company wrote, “It’s not enough to own the object—it’s also about what the object can teach us.” To Kind Company, “Collections are stories.” What this project affords is a level of examination of meaningful objects and gleaning some guidance from them to inform one’s self-discovery with her/his work.

13. Is there a way we can be notified about new installments of the Rare Book Feast?
My Twitter handle, @designfeast, is the best way: http://twitter.com/designfeast

World's greatest collection of Oscar Wilde

Source Paul Frazier Collectibles

The Clark Library has the best collection of Oscar Wilde material in the world - a great feat for one of the most highly-regarded and perhaps the most quotable figures in all of literature.

The Clark Library has more Wilde material than the British Museum

A collection such as this, whether private or public, offers a chance to look back in time from the current version of a given book or play and see the revisions and recreations through the different editions, and even back into the author's mind with handwritten and/or corrected text.

It provides an excellent demonstration of why collectors covet the earlier versions of Wilde, and why autograph manuscripts can be so valuable, such as Jane Austen's The Watsons.

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Rare Book Feast Film #1: Herbert Bayer’s Book of Maps

I have discovered a wonderful new video series on rare books. It can be located on Vimeo HERE.

I suggest you bookmark this site and look for upcoming videos. Each video should cover a rare book or rare book type. The videos are well shot and well presented. Enjoy!

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