Eight:48 have launched their first book, ‘Robert Samuel Hanson: 140 Colour Images’, a monograph focussing on the work of FFF favourite Robert Samuel Hanson. The book features 140 colour illustrations, organised into groups according to their subject matter. These illustrations are accompanied by an interview with the Rob about his work, life and accomplishments. You can buy a copy over at Counter-print for a very reasonable £27 – £32 (depending on where you live).
We got a hold of Céline Leterme of Leterme Dowling, who designed the book and are behind Eight:48 and Counter-print, to ask her some questions about their first published book.
Hi Céline, can you tell us a little more about how this project come together?
We have been working with Robert on an on-off basis since we started our design company a couple of years ago. (We actually first saw his work on FormFiftyFive, so massive thanks for that). The first project we worked with him on was a poster for one of our businesses, Counter-Print. It’s a cliche, but we were blown away with the result. The attention to detail was incredible, as was his ability to understand what we were looking for.
The project flowed really smoothly, so when we launched Counter-Print’s magazine, Eight:48, the first person we thought of going to for the design of a its cover was Robert. I suppose we cemented our relationship with that project, as there was always a lot of back and forth, including plenty of discussion in regards to how the magazine should look and how the covers would be perceived.
When Jon and I here decided that we wanted to dip a collective toe into publishing, we thought Robert would be a great subject matter to start with. We knew it would be a pleasure to work with him throughout the process, we were aware that he had a large body of quality work that people probably wouldn’t have seen before and asking him seemed like the perfect thank you for all the effort he’d put into our projects over the last couple of years.
Are these monographs a new thing you guys are going to get into on a regular basis?
We would ideally like to do more books and it would be nice to have something we could put out whenever we want, instead of Eight:48 which we seem to always have a deadline approaching for.
Did you approach Robert or did he propose the idea?
We approached Rob, he took some time to think about it. Maybe because we’d never published a book before or maybe just because he had to entrust us with representing what he is about.
After a couple of days he got back to us and said he’d love to be involved and that the trust we had built up with him, having worked on Eight:48 was the reason he would let us design his book. I think/hope our previous collaborations had proven that we wouldn’t produce something that wasn’t apt or an accurate representation of what he does.
In the end, creating a literal representation of what we thought ‘a Robert Hanson book’ would look like was the ‘big idea’ behind the design of the book. That’s why the cover of the book itself looks like a Hanson illustration – an almost icon-like design, which is seen when you pull the dust jacket off. It was also the reason we got Robert to illustrate the bookmark, as if it were also a graphic 2D icon.
Have you got any other artists lined up that you can mention?
No artists lined up for similar monographs yet, but we certainly would be interested in producing other books in the future. I suppose this one is a bit of a test. We like it, and if it amount to nothing else we’ll have a few hundred copies of Robert’s book to our selves. Perhaps we can make a chair out of them or something.
Was any of the work featured produced exclusively for the monograph?
Rob worked on the cover, book mark and divider pages in order to get the concept of the book across, the rest is all existing portfolio material.
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Make sure you check out Counter-print for more images and information.
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