In the 1962 Marc Saporta published Composition No. 1. It was the first published book that came in a box. Of course, there had been books published in slipcases or that were laid in boxes for many years prior to the release of Composition No. 1 but there hadn’t been one that consisted of single sheets laid into a box where “each page has a self-contained narrative, leaving it to the reader to decide the order they read the book, and how much or how little of the book they want to read before they begin again.”
There were no page numbers, no chapters, no table of contents. For their third offering the forward-looking London publisher Visual Editions has taken Saporta’s work and filtered it through their progressive lens. The result is a compelling production designed by Universal Everything, featuring an introduction by Tom Uglow of Creative Labs Google and Youtube and illustrations by Salvador Plascencia. Plascencia has also created a chart looking at all the different components that make up a “typical” book.
Here’s the trailer:
Other books from Visual Editions:
The Life and Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Tree Of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer
Also worth noting – A portion of the funding for Visual Editions comes from the Arts Council of England which receives some of its monies directly from the Lottery!