We put together a book for photographer Paul Assimacopoulos in 2009 entitled 'Brazilian Sisters—A spectacle for one'. Paul approached us with literally a stack of photographs—well perhaps not a stack but a couple of CD's full of everything he'd shot in the studio on 4 different occasions of these intriguing sisters. They are all Japanese yet born and raised in Sao Paulo Brazil. Now resident in New York City they are a staple of underground parties and events, creating one-off visual events reminiscent of what one imagines would have happened in Warhols' Factory.
Paul had a vision for his book but not the practical things he needed to make his vision a reality. Not often called upon to lend such a broad range of skills but at the same time having in the past been an exhibitions organizer—who also produced exhibition catalogues—and now a designer/retoucher with the capacity to proof such a large project in house; not to mention a devotee of those very same parties; this seemed a project made in heaven. Plus how often do you get to make a coffee table book?
As the project unfurled we went through all the images with Paul, helped him pick out the best of the crop and carefully crafted a story from them. Next came design, gathering copy and getting it edited and proofed, followed by a lengthy bout of retouching and CMYK proofing to make sure every image and page would look it's finest in print no matter how it was printed.
Having investigated many options Paul decided to go with Print on Demand (POD) to realize the final book. This choice produced a book with relatively high unit cost but only a small quantity. In order to enhance every single book and cement their status as a high value 'art object' he decided to do dust-covers at the quality of fine art prints. Well that just happens to coincide with the other side of Digital Skink's skill-set, our fine art printing business 'Skink Ink' where we specialize in making giclée prints for exhibition.
So the last part of this unique job was preparing and then printing on our Epson wide format printer a limited edition print cum dust jacket that was cut, scored and wrapped around the book. The beauty of this method is that as many or as few as are wanted can be produced at any time. The designs can also be varied, so now there are 4 versions of the book cover and in future possibly there may be more.
If the coffee table book has perhaps become an art form in it's own right then no where more than with this project with each artwork being wrapped in a dust cover that is a giclée print.
'Brazilian Sisters—A spectacle for one' was published by Stranger's Gate Books in February of 2010 (we did the logo for them too!)
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