Faber Finds book covers (2008)

Here’s a project from 2008 that I just learned about: a publisher set up a service to bring back out-of-print books on demand. They commissioned  Karsten Schmidt to build a “design machine” to generativity create covers for the books on demand, based on elements created by Marian Bantjes.

Instead of art-directing a specific concept, they build software that generalized the rules behind the artistic choices. The system has an order to it that reflects the different genres of books and the constraints of the design, while still making each book completely unique.

The final system works on the fly to generate a cover only when it needs to be displayed or printed. In theory, every cover printed can be completely unique, which is one way that generative processes are leading us towards a post-mass-production age. 

Industrial production at scale used to mean that everything had to be identical, and the humans had to be shoved into the identical fit. Now we can build machines that are custom-tailored to fit the humans. Because they enable flexibility, generative processes have the capability to be more humanizing than more traditional, rigid approaches. 

A more generative future is one that is more capable of adjusting to differences and disabilities and meeting humans as they are, not as they’re cut down to average size to fit into a machine.

You can read more details about the system at: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2008/july/faber-finds-generative-book-covers/