Making ambitious things
On Future Relic, sculptural embossing, and the craft behind every book we make
Hi all, Rose here.
My lucky job is to shepherd many of our books from finished draft to finished book. My favorite part is working with the authors themselves: not surprisingly, each of them brings a completely different perspective to this part of the creative workflow. They care about and prioritize different qualities of design, want different levels of input, and respond differently to schedules—they always keep me on my toes!
Of all the books we’ve published so far, Daniel Arsham’s Future Relic—Failures, Disasters, Detours, and How I Made a Career as an Artist has been my favorite from a craftsmanship perspective.
Future Relic is a brutally honest masterclass in how to pursue an artistic career. It combines elements of memoir and how-to, showing readers what it takes to sustain a creative life over time.
Each aspect of the book’s design and production was ambitious, and we had excellent partners in this work: the book’s design team, the legendary type and design studio House Industries. And of course, Daniel himself.
You don’t need a perfect idea to start. You don’t need a grand vision. You just need to make something, and then make something else. —Daniel Arsham
When the author is a visual artist, there are extra treats in store. The first was that Daniel created a new sculpture to serve as the basis of the cover art. It’s one of his labyrinth sculptures, cast in bronze or sand with intricate detail. Translating this to the jacket meant using a sculptural emboss. While standard embossing evenly raises height wherever it’s applied, sculptural embossing uses a custom die created specifically around the artwork, with varying depths so the image lifts off the page dynamically, like relief sculpture.
Inside, the book has printed endpapers and a meticulously typeset interior full of quotes, photos, and sketches. Even House Industries’ font, Trillium, is an original interpretation of square Roman capitals, in line with Arsham’s style of mixing ancient and modern. The first line in every chapter opens with elaborate hand-drawn drop-cap letters Daniel created from scratch for the book. Each one is an architectural drawing in the shape of a letter: a race car in the curve of an O, a building in the shape of an A. And if you get your hands on the signed edition, the hardcover case includes the subtitle stamped in white, hidden under the jacket like a treasure to discover.
Fittingly for a book about detours and persistence, the process of bringing it to life has involved adjustment and refinement. From revising printer proofs to fine-tuning the balance of text blocks and images, the creative work on this book was deeply gratifying. Making ambitious things is hard. It’s iterative, it’s humbling, and it’s so worth it.
Future Relic is far from the only book on our list where we’ve learned from our partners and been able to get creative with specs. Our 831 Stories novellas feature 831’s signature embossed gold foil Cupid logo—the perfect finishing touch on their unique color-block covers designed by C47. Also in the romance world, our deluxe LYX packages feature collectible touches like stenciled edges and sticker sheets. To get the sculpturally embossed foil mansion just right on James Frey’s Next to Heaven jacket, designed by Rodrigo Corral Studio, I even drove from NYC to our printer in Maryland to see how the color of the LithoFoil rendered on press. Who doesn’t love a rental car mission and graciously collaborative printers?
The focus of our list and the close partnership with our authors mean we can approach each production decision from a one-off perspective instead of sticking to a scaled process. It’s about what’s right for the individual book and its individual author.
We’ve ended up with a breadth of special packages including James Clear’s upcoming spiral-bound Atomic Habits Daily Calendar; the endlessly giftable Puzzle Mania! (with stenciled edges and an extra foldout, only at B&N); and Joseph Nguyen’s Anxiety Antidote Boxed Set collecting both of his clothbound books into a beautiful package.
In each case, our goal is always the same: find as many ways to say yes to our authors’ visions as we can. I feel the result every time I run to the door to see the finished copies for the first time—it’s like being a kid unwrapping presents, and the excitement is renewed every time.
—Rose
Just started the book....he had tenacity and vision, leaving Miami for NYC as the journey begins. Thank you!!
This whole article just brought a smile to my face. It's inspiring to hear and feel the words around bringing unique pieces of work to the world that jump off the autopilot process of traditional publishing.