Slow Publishing With Arion Press
San Francisco’s Arion Press still uses decades-old machines to make beautiful books by hand. They’re one of the few remaining presses in the world that do everything from start to finish — they even cast their own type.
Arion dwells in an almost extinct corner of the book world: Call it Slow Publishing. It produces only three books a year, each a unique art object reproduced in editions of less than 300. Art is so important, in fact, that the illustrators-art-world luminaries-drive the title selection process.
“We learned that the projects went a lot more smoothly when we said to the artist, ‘What do you want to do?’” Blythe said.
Anthony Bourdain visited Arion in 2015 for a online series called Raw Craft — it’s a great look at how and why they produce books this way:
Business Insider’s Still Standing series recently profiled Arion as well:
(thx, stephen)
Discussion 1 comment
I love this! I wonder if ordinary folk are allowed to visit, would love to do this.
Here’s another enterprise that helps create fabulous books. I have the A24 book they worked on (based on the Everything Everywhere film), and it’s truly a work of art, with all sorts of design byways:
https://www.actualizers.com/
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