Believe it or not, there are a few people around here who really love books. When our creative director, Michael Carabetta, suggested a field trip to the American Bookbinders’ Museum, it was a no-brainer that we would want to go check it out. Tim James, owner of Taurus Bookbindery in San Francisco, has been collecting antique bookbinding materials, machines, and ephemera for years. His collection grew and grew, and in 2006 he moved the collection to a space in the Mission where book enthusiasts can stop by to visit (by appointment). It is the only museum of its kind in the country. Here are a few things that Tim showed us on our tour.

The press and plough (below left) was the primary piece of equipment for cutting and pressing for over 400 years, from Gutenberg on. The guillotine cutter (below right) was used to cut boards.

Early tools (below) used to decorate book covers.

The thick rag paper that books were made from needed to be flattened with a hammer (below left) before the book could be bound. It was one burly guy’s job to hammer paper all day, and those were long, 16 hour days. You can hopefully see the guy hammering away in the background of the image below, right.

In addition to the evolution of the machinery used to make books, Tim’s interests include the history of the people who made the books. He has some fascinating ephemera (below) that document the workshops and factories, as well as the extracurricular activities of these folks.

Below is an example of a book that would have been used by a door-to-door book salesman in the 19th century. Not as many bookstores back then! One side shows the cloth cover and thickness of the spine of the finished book. Want to upgrade? The other side shows the cover of the deluxe leather edition. Want to add some jewelry to your book? (see crosses below as an example) The salesman could record sales on the pages within and send it back to the publisher who would fulfill the order via mail.

Being designers, we couldn’t help photographing some of the packaging and logotypes used on the various machines.

If anyone is interested in visiting the American Bookbinders Museum, you can make an appointment through their website.

Thanks to Tim James for showing us around this interesting collection!

Brooke Johnson
Senior Designer

Popularity: 2% [?]

For the past week a diverse group of beautifully designed Dutch posters have been on view in the lobby of Chronicle Books. Staff and visitors have enjoyed the work of Bob Van Dijk, Willem Henri Lucas, Richard Niessen, Wout de Vringer, Studio Dumbar, Lust, and Harmen Liemburg. The designers created the posters between the years of 1988 and 2008. Many are hand silkscreened by the designers. The posters come from the collection of San Francisco designer Jon Sueda. Sueda and Los Angeles designer Sean Donahue founded AtRandom with the goal of producing public gatherings of designers, artists, writers and researchers in order to stimulate dialogue and investigate design culture. You can read more about their endeavors at www.atrandom.us. Chronicle Books sponsored the poster show as part of our ongoing art and design outreach series, Local/Global.

We held a reception for the show’s opening on Friday, 3/6. It was a fun gathering of designers and design enthusiasts. We were fortunate to have Dutch designer Harmen Liemburg in attendance. Posters for the show (right) were designed and printed by Jon Sueda. (Local/Global lettering by Harmen Liemburg.)

Posters by Lust and Studio Dumbar.

Zeebelt Theater, 33.25” x 23.5” (left); Nationale Toneel, 23” x 16.5” (right) by Studio Dumbar.

Posters by Bob Van Dijk.

Posters by Wout de Vringer and Richard Niessen.

New Address 2, 19.5” x 27” (left); Chaufont Poster, Constellation Font, 47” x 33” (right) by Richard Niessen.

Detail from New Address 2 by Richard Niessen.

de 4E Salon, 28.5” x 40” (left); Strangers in Paradise, 23” x 33.5” by Willem Henri Lucas.

Ki ki ri ki Souvenir Poster, 35” x 48” (left); Pays-Bas A–Z Concert and Party, 47” x 33” (right) by Harmen Liemburg.

Detail from Pays-Bas A–Z Concert and Party by Harmen Liemburg.

Brooke Johnson
Senior Designer

Popularity: 3% [?]

I recently had the great fortune to visit the shared studio of Jon Sueda of Stripe SF and Martin Venezky of Appetite Engineers. Their space is located in a little alleyway near the SFMOMA.

Both designers have worked on several projects with Chronicle Books over the years. The latest book that Jon, along with his partner in Los Angeles, Gail Swanlund, designed for us is Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters. Martin’s latest was the Kelly Slater book, For the Love.

Jon’s side of the studio shows his love of posters that he has collected from designers around the world.

Some of Jon’s recent work includes a new identity and several show catalogs for the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art at California College of the Arts (CCA). Both Jon and Martin are on the graphic design faculty at CCA.

Another of Jon’s recent projects was this beautiful identity for Baer Ridgeway Exhibitions.

Martin is a great collector of many things, and his side of the studio displays some fun and surprising objects and images.

This is the typewriter Martin used to create the lovely wavelike artwork for the Kelly Slater book.

Several walls are covered with the photos that Martin and his team shot for creative inspiration for a project for Reebok.

One of Martin’s recent projects is a deck of cards called Diaspora that he created in collaboration with Michael Cunningham for the SFMOMA.

His intern cut by hand all the cut pieces that were incorporated into the artwork for the cards.

Thanks to Jon and Martin for letting me stop by and see what’s happening with you. It was a very inspiring trip!

Brooke Johnson
Senior Designer

Popularity: 3% [?]

Or the smaller the sign, the closer to God?

When I occasionally decide to walk to work rather than take the MUNI, I enjoy the time it affords me to contemplate the urban landscape. Being a designer, this inevitably gets me to thinking about graphic design and its role throughout the South of Market neighborhood. One two block stretch on Folsom has some examples of signage that continually amuse me, in that geeky design way, by their contrast in size.

The first sign is for a bar called “Wish.” You can see that it’s pretty tiny (pen shown for comparison).

Across the street from Wish is a sushi place that also has a tiny sign.

Sushi Groove gets more hip points for not only being tiny, but also being barely legible. Compared to this sign, the one for Wish seems almost practical.

About half block away from this insider chic, self-storage looms large.

Really large.

That’s a BIG sign! I marvel thinking of the point size!

I suppose that neither of these examples of big and small are all that unique. The large sign is ubiquitous in capitalist America, where competitive businesses must shout out for consumers’ attention, while the small sign signifies exclusivity for the urban in-crowd. It’s these signs’ proximity that makes them noteworthy. They are part of this quirky, quirky neighborhood where chic sushi coexists next to auto shops and self-storage. And it’s this quirkiness that makes it so interesting to walk through.

Brooke Johnson
Senior Designer

Popularity: 3% [?]

We moved our office to the eastern edge of the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco about a year ago. In my comings and goings to our new building over the past year I’ve noticed some beautiful old signs, but my exploration of our new neighborhood has been cursory at best. As designers, our surroundings can provide a wealth of inspiration, and I’ve been in need of some of that lately. So, I decided it was time to hit the streets with a camera.

This neighborhood was largely developed as a warehouse district. You can see remnants of the industrial past in some signage and the big, square-brick-box style of much of the architecture.

Recent waves of development have brought in lofts and the new Giants ballpark. Dot coms and hip restaurants are tucked in with auto body shops and self-storage centers.

There’s graffiti, rubbed-out graffiti, messages overwriting other messages. A mysterious stencil on a wall.

There’s texture and color. Lots of orange in this alley.

An artist has fabricated some icicles on the numbers and letters of their address and covered a wall in colored cardboard shingles.

The 500 block of Bryant yields some lovely worn numbers.

When I look a little further, really look at the details, I find a living, breathing neighborhood. These one-of-a-kind mailboxes, timeworn numbers, and secret graphic messages, make me feel like I’m part of something bigger than me. The neighborhood exploration works—I’m inspired.

Brooke Johnson
Senior Designer

Popularity: 3% [?]