Nina Ulmaja SWE

Independent graphic designer, art director and author, runs a design studio in Stockholm focusing on book design and brand building graphic design. At the moment involved in writing a book about book design and production in collaboration with a Dr of Litterature at Uppsala university. The book will be published in autumn 2019. Head of Graphic Design at Albert Bonniers Förlag 2005–2018. Lecturer at Konstfack, National College for Arts, Crafts and Design 2001–2004. Master of graphic design and illustration, Konstfack National College of Arts Crafts and Design, Stockholm.

Development of book design from industrialization to digitization

A research project about the visual changes of a 140 year old book lead to me writing a new book about how typography and book production has changed from industrializing (1800s’) to digitizing (2000s’) and how that affected book design. An interesting and deep dive into details in typesetting. This journey through more than 150 editions of the same book lead all the way to Gutenberg, the first book printers but also to the most conceptual book design of today. The similarities between what happened when book production was industrialized and what is going on today, in this post-digitizing era in book production, is striking.