Irma Boom is a genius when it comes to books. The Dutch graphic designer has created over 250 books - each of them are completely unique - and about one fifth of her work has found home in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Take, for example, this book that Boom created for Chanel: it has no ink, yet you can read it.
Liz Stinson of Wired wrote:
Most recently, she completed a book commissioned by Chanel, the Parisian fashion house, for its Chanel No. 5 perfume. And in classic Boom style, it’s not what you’d expect. The 300-page book has no ink—each of the crisp white pages is embossed with a drawing or quotation that helps the story of Gabrielle Chanel unfold. It’s clean, understated and ephemeral, and somehow still totally engrossing.
When Boom begins working on a book, she totally immerses herself in the subject. She says Chanel gave her carte blanche to do whatever she wanted with the it, with no artistic pressure or push in any direction. The fashion brand simply provided her with as much information as possible and let it percolate until the idea struck her. In this case, Boom spent time in Chanel’s Paris apartment and studied her life. She witnessed the bottling process and even joined the Chanel team as they picked roses in Grasse, a village in the Provence region of France. “When I was there I immediately got the idea for the book,” Boom recalls. “What I smelled there was so intense, exciting… not visible.”
Read more about how Boom "printed" her invisible Chanel book over at Wired.
Photos: Galerie VIVID