Irma boom designed “Sheila Hicks: the metaphor of weaving” for American weaving artist Sheila Hicks in 2006. The wet and sawn margins of this white book create uneven roughness, which echoes the texture of textile selvage. The pure white wordless cover is in sharp contrast to the colorful textiles in the book. Irma boom compares designing a book to building a building. The designer, like an architect, decides not only the overall shape of the building, but also how the furniture, lighting and material finishes will decorate its interior. Creation begins with a concept, “it must have a concept.”. However, instead of using software for typesetting, she uses models to realize her ideas – hand-made, greatly reduced versions. She uses these miniature models to test the feasibility of ideas and materials, and to check the structural distribution of books. This process is like an architect making a scale model of a building before editing and designing the content.
As a pioneer of traditional book design, she has always believed that even with the rapid development of Internet information and e-books, the position of books can not be replaced“ The network is flat, but the book is three-dimensional. The visual, tactile, olfactory and other sensory experiences brought by words, pictures and layout are incomparable to e-books. ” “Space art, like architecture, can create a sense of rhythm and flow through layout,” she said. It’s the same with book design. Even a page turning action can be a continuous flow of water or a solidification moment. Readers will find that the quality of paper books can’t be copied digitally, just like hilacix: the metaphor of weaving. If you just look at the PDF version, you won’t feel its texture. “