Feature Book design
The line of best fit
The latest book from the co-creator of the fascinating illustrated compendium of the capital, Curiocit, is a starkly different but no less enthralling visual treat, with the work of Penguin’s art director Jim Stoddart and French illustrator Quibe threading through every page. Danny Arter reports
T
HE COVER AND publication metadata for Henry Eliot’s Follow This Thread lists only Eliot, the co-author of the delightful alternative London
A-Z Curiocit, as the book’s creator. It probably ought to credit French illustrator Quibe, whose single-line draw- ings fleck the narrative, and Jim Stoddart, Penguin’s art director and designer of this remarkable collection, as co-creators. The book is ostensibly about mazes and it lives up to the billing of its subtitle: A Maze Book to Get Lost In. Its text explores the history of mazes—there are a record number globally, with more being constructed every year—through the tales of labyrinths real and fictional, and the role they have played in literature, art and film. Pac-Man rubs shoulders with Picasso. The narrative constructed by Eliot, creative editor
of the Penguin Classics list, is absorbing. He says he’s been “fascinated by mazes for a long time, especially the ways in which we incorporate them into the stories we tell... Writing a book seemed like a natural way to discuss those ideas.” Joyfully for the reader, the execu- tion of that book mirrors its subject’s complexit—and pursuant satisfaction. “I knew early on that I wanted the reading experience
to replicate the experience of walking a maze,” Eliot says; he also wanted it to centre around the thread that Ariadne, goddess of the labyrinth, gave to Theseus, the object of her affection. Sent sacrificially into a labyrinth with the Minotaur at its heart, he used the thread to
20 10th April 2018
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