Custom book-wrappers that make shelf mosaics

Thatcher Wine, a designer, has a firm called Juniper Books that does a roaring trade in designing custom book-jackets that form shelf-mosaics: "What makes Juniper Books special is that it can manufacture new covers in-house on a large-format printer. So instead of scouring second-hand shops for an aesthetically pleasing array, Wine's four-person team can design, print, and assemble a beautiful bespoke library." (Joseph Flaherty/Wired)

These Book Covers Are Custom Made to Match Your Library

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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EH

Room for titles might help, but I guess it’s custom anyway.
- Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston
  
  This is a great way to hide my collection of hundreds of volumes of Victorian pornography behind a huge mural that says “BIBLES AND RECIPES”
  - Ambiguity
    
    In these here parts, it’s more likely that someone would hide their collection of bibles and recipes as Victorian porn.
- Charlie B
  
  I’m thinking these are not for people who actually read books, so titles are unnecessary.
noah django

am I the only one who likes the look of the “before” picture better?
- Ambiguity
  
  No.
  
  I guess the aesthetics are arguable (different people have different taste), but as far as user interface goes, looks like a fail to me. Agree with EH that titles are a feature, not a bug.
- http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
  
  that was a BEFORE pic?
  
  d–n. I thought that was another set of wrappers designed to give boring books [like the uniform remaindered lots you see at Ikea] a “classy” look.
  
  [.... actually opens the link to see larger images ....]
  
  waaah!
splashu

Great! Now I just need all my books to be the same size and thickness and we’ll be set.
Amorette

This looks like a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. How to hide identical books whose titles I don’t want to know in order to make me look pretentious.
shutz

I try to avoid stacking horizontal books.

For one, the taller the stack, the harder it is to pull out the one book you want to read.
For two, I don’t want to start attracting paranormal researchers who will stare at one of my stacks in awe, mumbling about symmetrical book-stacking.

Some years ago, when I was about to move out of my parents’ house into my first apartment, one of the things I was shopping for were book shelves. I needed something cheap (cheaper than IKEA, if possible) that would hold most if not all of my collected books and magazines. I visited multiple furniture stores, and all I found were bookcases with doors. That just went completely against my principles. Books are not meant to be stared at. They’re meant to be read! I eventually found some cheap flat-packed shelves which still serve me well, to this day. Boring, but completely functional.

If I ever reach a point where I can afford a “customized” collection, I’d probably try and get myself a leather-bound (with gold-lettering on the leather) collection of all of Isaac Asimov’s novels and short story collections. If I’m really rich, I’ll try and complete the collection with all of his non-fiction books, and maybe even all the anthologies he edited, as well.
sfnate

That’s not art, it’s advertising. There are better and more subtle ways of arranging books to achieve an artful array of color and shapes, but this strikes me as a billboard approach to promoting one’s “good taste” in books. But I realize there are plenty of people who dig crazy advertising schemes as an artform, so this might gain some traction among that crowd.
seyo

Vertical Inc.’s series on the life of Buddha by Osamu Tezuka has this design feature on the spines of the books, but they do it in a manner that is actually functional:

http://www.fanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/buddha.jpg
BarBarSeven

While I like books to be aesthetically pleasing, I can’t help but think a customization like this fetishizes the aesthetics of books at the expense of their content. It rubs me the same way folks buying tons of—I don’t know—red covered books to make a unified shelf do: Cheap & demeaning.
DMStone

Q:”What happens when product designer Philippe Starck needs 1,500 books — all with white spines — to fill out the shelves in a posh new Miami hotel?”

A: He fills the shelves with an embarrassing assortment of old bestsellers and hides the titles. I know, I’ve seen it. I work for a bookstore which sells old bookclubs and condensed books by the yard to decorators for exactly this purpose.

I have a hard time believing anyone who might be impressed by a library wouldn’t take a closer look at the selection itself. These jackets are just a garish ornamental addition, like the columns on a McMansion.
- BarBarSeven
  
  Books by the foot at The Strand bookstore in NYC. Literature as fetish objects. http://www.strandbooks.com/books-by-the-foot-gallery
http://www.facebook.com/peter.hampe Peter Hampe

Conceptually, way cool. Can tell where “this” book goes, or if a book is “in use”.

OTOH – Yet Another Book Project. Along with inventorying, now there is the “add the correct book cover” to them all.