The Sori Yanagi Appreciation Society

This unconventional book object – with its silver-grey ring binding, slender portrait format and multi-fold card cover, white on the outside and brown on the inside – delivers an unpretentious, enchanting paean to the Japanese product designer Sori Yanagi, making his work accessible to a wider audience outside Japan. Initiated by a product and exhibition designer and a writer from the UK, the project brings together short and extremely short contributions from around 100 experts, presented alphabetically by surname, each on a single page (recto and verso). Many have an image on the front and text on the back, and instead of page numbers, the same number of the contribution appears on both sides of the page. A sense of unity is imposed on the diverse photographs and drawings – many of them objective presentations of Yanagi’s designs, but also snapshots of everyday use – via the coarse screen-printing in silver and a consistent width, the same as the text block. An introductory section on red paper and an index and colophon on blue paper have been inserted into the ring binding before and after, respectively, the contribution pages. The design decisions are few in number but precise, and while the book feels like it is of great value, it is not overdesigned or opulent, but functional and inexpensively produced. The design is also extremely transparent, as the book is nothing more than what it proposes to be: a simple, open compilation of contributions whose ring binder structure renders it expandable. The deliberate functionalism reflects the way Yanagi worked: the everyday functionality of his products was invariably as important to him as their beauty. As such, the book successfully pays homage to the designer through its content, but also as an object.

Editors
Michael Marriott, Duncan Riches, London (UK)

Authors
Various

Design
Urs Lehni, Zürich (CH)

Printing
Printon AS, Tallinn (EE)

Publisher
Rollo Press, Zürich (CH)

ISBN
978-3-906213-53-8