A book containing written piece by SFI President David Krakauer has been recognized as one of the 50 most pleasing books of 2014, The Design Observer Group has announced.
The book, James Drake: 1,242 by Kathryn Kanjo and David Krakauer, designed by David Chickey, gives a tour of artist James Drake’s ambitious project of creating 1,242 drawings using simple graphite, ink, and paper. Krakauer authored a haunting description of Drake’s work, which appears in the book alongside Drake’s visual art. Here's an excerpt:
Somewhere in a white studio a connection is being drawn among the denizens of Dante’s Inferno, Melville’s salt-encrusted metaphysicians of the oceans, the mathematical physicists of the destructive energy of infinitesimal matter, extinct melancholic and non-systematic essayists in prose and paint, fanatical taxonomists and unifiers of natural and unnatural history, and those susceptible to the illusion of knowing through seeing with their insatiate desire to bind within a single life the limitless infusoria of the imagination. Such, it seems, is the studio of James Drake…
The Design Observer Group’s annual 50 Books/ 50 Covers contest recognizes books as aesthetic, physical objects “in an age where reading increasingly happens on screens. It is clear from the winning entries that designers and publishers are not just resigned to the new world but are actively challenging it.”
Read more about the contest on The Design Observer Group website (July 14, 2015)
View a close up of James Drake: 1,242
Purchase the book on amazon.com
Read an article about Drake and Krakauer’s upcoming presentation in Santa Fe (July 24, 2015)