A Practice for Everyday Life

Conceptual artist John Latham began incorporating books into his artworks in the late 1950s, exploiting their object quality and subverting their value and structure as repositories of knowledge. Reflecting this inversion of purpose, he referred to these works as ‘skoob’ (‘books’ written backwards). This publication was created to accompany an exhibition of Latham’s works at Lisson Gallery, New York, in 2018.

Our design for Skoob Works emphasises the physicality of the book form, with a duplexed paper cover and Swiss binding, bound with yellow textile tape. Inside, the layouts obliquely reference the visual language of 1960s art book design, with fine sans serif typography and a generous use of white space.