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Louise Schouwenberg. Hella Jongerius: misfit. London: Phaidon, 2010
“Hella Jongerius: Misfit is a monograph that documents the work of Dutch designer Hella Jongerius. Created by Jongerius, with graphic design by Irma Boom, the intention was to produce a book that features design but also a design object in itself. The title of the book, Misfit, refers to Jongerius's reintroduction of craftmanship and thereby imperfection, into what has become a standarized industrial design world. This approach also became an ethos for the design of the book itself. The idea was not to create a glossy, perfect book but to document the work as truthfully as possible, even if that meant, for example, including rough snapshots as well as high-quality photography. From this starting point, Jongerius and Boom, joined by writer of some of the texts Louise Schouwenberg, began collating work produced by Jongerius since 1993. The result is more than two hundred fifty images presented on 255 pages of the 308-page volume. Rather than present the work chronologically or alphabetically, they decided to arrange the images by color. Boom explains that the sequence came together very naturally, the aim being not to force a perfect solution but to let the composition arise organically. The text is presented separately from the images in sections and is printed on a rougher paper stock. The binding of the book also exhibits an innovative yet simple solution. Inspired by Japanese manga magazines, for which sheets of paper are merely stapled twice and folded over, Misfit is stitch-bound, with a simple cloth staple forming the book's spine, and the pages remaining untrimmed. On the cover, a black line drawing of one of Jongeriu's vases comes with five electrostatic stickers in different colors, so that the reader can customize the cover in various ways.”
Graphic: 500 designs that matter. London: Phaidon, 2017