An Electrifying Conference
by Ellen G.K. Rubin
(continued from page 1)
“If there is a way to do it better… find it.” —Thomas A. Edison
Exhausted from a full day of traveling, schmoozing, and note taking, I shooed the group out to get some rest in preparation for tomorrow’s full day. Friday began early with a panel discussion, well titled, Can’t stop the pop: the state of contemporary pop-up books, moderated by Kyle Olmon. The panel consisted of Robert Sabuda-Paper Engineer, Monika Brandup, V.P. and Creative Director at Up With Paper, a veteran of and award-winner in the greeting card field, and myself, The Popuplady-Collector.
Kyle asked some probing questions:
1. What changes have you seen in pop-up books during the last 2 years in the Great Recession?
Robert: Having 5 million books in print, Robert told the group of his experience with traditional publishers. They don’t see where they can make a profit with digital books with apps costing in the range of $60,000. He himself doesn’t see participating in digital books anytime soon. In addition, price point has become more important than ever with publishers trying to keep the books under $20.
Ellen: Mostly I’ve seen changes in the number of books out there, their diminished size, and the increase in pop-up greeting cards.
Monika: Monika has also observed publishers bringing down their price points by decreasing pop-up spreads from 12 to 8. Further, lowering prices has been hampered by increased Chinese wages, labor shortages, and rising material costs. Book buyers are ordering smaller quantities and being more selective, depending more on test markets. Children’s books have become more of a crossover nature, being both a novelty gift and activity book.
2. What do you see as the future of traditional pop-up books and cards in this digital age of eBooks?
Monika: “Pop-up books [are] like art books, [they] can’t be replaced” due to the tangibility, sound and smell of the paper. For some holidays, like Christmas, spending more on books and cards is acceptable and may replace a gift. Pop-up greeting cards in general have had positive sales and “have a special niche.” “I would never give my Mother an e-card on Mothers’ Day,” she avowed.
Ellen: There are quite successful pop-up apps already out. The website www.zooburst.com provides software to create one’s own pop-up app. Charlotte Johnson, sitting in the audience, held up the digital book she created with it. Having seen tablet ads targeting young children, I conceded that every child would sooner or later have one. Chris Stevens of thedailybeast.com said, “pop-ups will be fine thanks to their weird position as art objects for children” though he recognizes eBooks and book apps are undercutting the market for traditional books. I added paper pop-ups will remain in the toy, education, and artist book realms partially due to the nostalgia factor.
3. With the gradual but steady demise of bookstores, especially independent ones, how will collectors find pop-up books and cards?
Ellen: Barnes & Nobles no longer has a separate shelf for pop-ups books. Increasingly, I find my books on-line, in catalogs, or in unlikely places, like the clothing store, Anthropology, where I found the Meggendorfer Prize candidate, Paper Blossoms.
Monika: Despite her products being in about 3500 retailers, and especially with the Mom & Pop stores closing, it’s important for all of us to support our local booksellers. In terms of eBook pricing litigation, how has that affected your work, Robert?
Robert: He felt traditional publishers are “standing scared” of all that is changing in the publishing field. “They tend to circle their wagons.” As for eBooks, art directors of children’s illustrated books have been telling Robert, eBooks are too expensive to produce, and there is no consistently good model” for producing them and making a profit. The unique situation of publishers accepting returned unsold books further depresses their bottom line. By the next conference, “everything I’m saying could be completely different.”
Ellen: It is my view that traditional publishers may go the way of the buggy manufacturers who refused to make cars. Tech savvy groups will become publishers.
Monika: Jumping Jack Press treads carefully when considering eBooks not knowing what the return might be. Monika further commented, “Pop-up books are Grandma Bait.” Is she ever right!
4. What is the one thing our group can do to reach and inspire the next generation of paper engineers?
Robert: He hopes that the “private sharing moment” of reading to kids will continue.
Ellen: I basically agreed with Robert’s sentiments to continue the tradition of reading to children.
Monika: She gave kudos to Robert for training so many interns and sending them out into the world to create their own books. Monika suggested broadcasting ones passion for pop-ups with lectures, workshops, and exhibits in galleries to keep the industry vibrant. She encouraged librarians to promote pop-ups with speakers and exhibits. “I think it’s really up to us to keep it [pop-ups] going.” After a break, we got down to our scheduled presentations.
“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” ―Thomas A. Edison
Talk about flipping a switch. Here is where the membership got to hear Jie Qi, who gave a mini-presentation last night. Her The Fine Art of Electronics would electrify the room. She is a PhD student at MIT majoring in engineering and a part of a group called, The Hi-Low Tech Media Lab, who are trying to find ways to use electricity in creative media.
Jie’s challenge was to use conductive material with paper. She taught herself to make pop-ups, applied programmable chips to magnets and put magnets on the pages. Using switches and pull-tabs, muscle wire, conductive paint, or variously activated sensors, she made her pop-ups ‘dance.’ “Pull-tabs are much like switches,” she said. Flowers opened, Cityscapes lit up. Octopi swam. A Venus flytrap grabbed at its stimulant. You could hear the sudden intake of our breaths.
One could feel the creative energy rise in the room as the paper engineers’ brains whirred thinking, “Where can I use this stuff?” When I asked Robert Sabuda, seated next to me, is he thinking about using these materials, he responded, “It’ll be too expensive.” Right on cue, Jie told us most materials were bought in a hardware store and were cheap. She used: touch sensors that played Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; muscle memory wire that made real butterfly wings flutter; conductive paint and no wires to make LED lights glitter in a laser-cut NYC skyline. We…were…awestruck!!
Most stunning of all was the calligraphic ‘painting’ of dandelions. With the use of a breath sensor, blowing on the dandelions aglow with yellow LED lights caused their seeds to scatter gracefully outward, dispersing white sparkles, like little fireflies.
A real butterfly, wired for animation
Another work of art was of hanging paper strips embedded with motion-detecting wire. When someone walked by it, the strips would ‘dance’ around creating a kinetic artwork. Jie was able to explain all this to us in the most basic language. She calls her work, “Scrapbooking with electronics.” How fortunate are the elementary and middle school students who attend her workshops! She would like to write a guidebook to her techniques. Her website is technolojie.com. MBS came short of giving Jie a standing ovation.
“A genius is just a talented person who does his homework.” —Thomas A. Edison
Jie is a tough act to follow but not for Andy Baron, referred to in earlier times as The Wunderkind. His presentation covered the production of the 2010 pop-up annual report for the Acuity Insurance Company of Sheboygan, WI. [Yes, Collectors. There are pop-up annual reports. They are very rare and special.] Acuity already had a history of unusual annual reports before they tapped Andy for the job. In an attempt to be “anti-ephemera” and not be tossed out without a second glance, their reports were in pizza boxes with lift-the-flap pepperoni, and record jackets.
Andy worked with the Dufour ad agency’s illustrator, Aaron Boyd, to come up with the spreads. Each spread of A Storybook Year, a takeoff on children’s nursery rhymes with pop-ups, would include a booklet with real Acuity information. Andy had to work closely with Boyd who had no pop-up illustrating experience. Even Andy’s wife, Paula, got into the act suggesting the pigs who were to catch Humpty Dumpty do so with a frying pan. There were many more jokes incorporated into the spreads. For example, the pigs in the barn were reminiscent of Mission Control taking care of “The Cow that jumped over the Moon.” The cow appears in a rocket. The final spread of the Old Woman in a Shoe featured the Acuity Board of Directors as the children. Visit www.popyrus.com and http://makingofapopup.com/ for more images.
Andy had to work doubly hard on cost cutting after the catastrophic earthquake in Chile exponentially increased the cost of wood pulp used for papermaking. He went to China to oversee the production of 19,000 books to be distributed to insurance brokers throughout the country. The Annual Report garnered much media attention and covetous awards such as Best Annual Report in the United States. Andy reported Acuity is a good employer who gave Girl Scout cookies and coupons to employees at the reports launching. In the past, insurance agents who thought lavish annual reports were a waste of money returned them to Acuity. None of the Storybook copies were returned. Generously, Andy made 2 copies available for the Silent Auction. “ What’s in your wallet?”
“We don’t know a millionth of 1 percent about anything.”—Thomas A. Edison
Think we could sit back, schmooze over lunch, and digest all we’d seen and heard? No way! Grab a lunch bag and get on the bus; we’re going to the J. Willard Marriott Library of the University of Utah (UU). We are to visit the exhibit, with the Smithsonian Libraries-like title, Fold, Flap, Peek, Pull, Pop: A Hands-On Experience with Movable Books. The Marriott Library was another modern grand affair with exhibits on several floors. The ground floor had a very impressive student exhibit. In a vitrine marked, “Is this a book?” was a clear plastic box with etched text. Kinda begs the question. Upstairs, at the Book Arts Center, we were divided into A and B groups.
My group started with Luise Poulton, Rare Books Manager, Special Collections. We sat around a long table, a book in front of each of us; 40 in all. Her rules were quite stringent.
1. Leave all belongings in a locker. No notebook or camera for me.
2. Careful wiping of all aspects of ones hands with the available wipes, then throw the wipe over one’s shoulder to be collected by someone else. [This reminded me of scrubbing for surgery.]
3. Do NOT touch the books until given instructions. [Tsk, tsk, Richard Staples. I saw you cheating.]
4. Do not move the books from their places.
5. The lists and descriptions of the books on the tables were for us to keep.
When Louise gave us the go-ahead to visit each book, it was like musical chairs moving from one place to another. So many of us were collectors and couldn’t help ticking off which books we had and which we wanted. The book list became a shopping list. There were some books I had never handled before, like Maryline Poole Adams’ A brief but moving history of printing, 1985 and a couple of her peepshows. One book, The Lending Library, made up of three library pockets to hold lending cards [remember them?] inspired Ann to try her hand at using her supply of pockets for an art project.
When it was time to switch locations, Group B went into the printing section of the Book Arts Center where students learn to use the various types of printing presses. We were given a brief demonstration on simple paper repairs and shown ways to differentiate between engravings and lithographs. Yours truly needed one-on-one instruction using the book examples placed around the shop.Finally, we picked up our pre-scored commemorative pop-up cards designed by Shawn Sheehy and put them in the letterpress. We rolled the handle and Voila! They emerged with a beautiful golden beehive design on them. No one, I’m told, lost a finger in the process.
I would have rested before our dinner/Board meeting but the buzz on the bus said that MBS was invited to the Red Queen Book Arts bookstore for an open house. This store specializes in pop-ups, movables, the book arts, and illustrated books. It was 95 degrees but we were going….on foot. Frank Gagliardi and I were among the first to arrive. No AC. Ceiling fan. Shelves stocked with movables and a flat vitrine with ephemera. Before you knew it, the place was packed and the shelves had gaping holes like a hillbilly’s smile. I was able to score some movable postcards including two Livermore & Knight, a pioneer publisher who put advertisements on movable postcards at the turn of the 19th Century.
I was about to head back to my cool room when Kyle walked into the bookstore grinning, “Have you been around the corner to Ken Sanders’ shop? Lots of good stuff.” And then he winked! No cool room for me. I came away from Ken Sanders’ shop with a miniature artist book by Peter Thomas’ daughter, Suzanne, entitled, Protection. Does her Daddy know she made an accordion book with pockets, each containing a condom, and a line of text reading, “papa says, ‘never leave the house without protection in your purse’”? Kids!
Despite the heat on the walk back, I did have a delightful time with Leah Hamilton whose pop-up exhibition at the University of Rochester I was privileged to see. This show was Leah’s curatorial debut and a first for pop-ups at the University. The show was so well received; it was extended for several weeks. I’ll be looking for more exhibits from Leah.
Our Board meeting included our newest members, Shawn Sheehy and Monika Brandup. It was a lively and productive get together. Ann reported that our membership has declined. Abby volunteered to put us on Facebook to give MBS greater exposure, especially to a younger population. It was decided that proceeds from the Silent Auction would be earmarked for Conference programming and for scholarships to sponsor members to attend the Conferences. Ann confided that her husband, Richard, had remarked that Ann “Wasn’t getting any younger.” [Ouch!] Consequently, for each new idea proposed, Ann looked for a volunteer to step up to take care of it. [C’mon, Members! Volunteer to help out. It takes more hands to run this organization run.]
