Dutch Landscape
José Quintanar’s conceptual and witty series of line drawings which are presented in slim volumes that he produces at a prolific rate are brought together into coherent book form through two simple but powerful design ideas. The book itself is comprised of 19 volumes that were published over four years in different formats of between 8 and 34 pages and that are included in full as original-size facsimiles. A first clever design decision was to align all the facsimiles with the gutter and the bottom of the page. Thus when leafing through the pages it feels less like a reproduction and more like a simulation of the original volumes. The second choice is the large amount of blank space left on the book pages, providing a background to the much smaller page formats of the original volumes. Each of the volumes is given here its own background colour tone, chosen to complement the drawings. This creates a colourful and playful effect, such that at first glance it almost resembles a children’s colouring or activity book. There is no cover as such; rather, the book block is glued in a makeshift style into a semi-card with flaps, which will inevitably detach. The semi-card is entirely unprinted on the exterior, but an enclosed sheet with stickers – including the author’s name, book title and ISBN – suggests that the cover design is not as yet final. Everything is contemporary and engaging, especially as there is so much to discover in the individual volumes. This publication is a good example of how the task of creating a book can be accomplished with minimal design means and a comparatively small budget.
