Another fea­ture I’m rolling out on Brown Paper Bag is the Thurs­day Round Up. There are many things that I think are neat besides works on paper (and beyond!), so each week I’ll be shar­ing a group of prod­ucts, objects, etc., that I really enjoy. To start off with a bang, I’ve decided to show a few pop-up books!

I’ve always loved pop-up books and been fas­ci­nated with their con­struc­tion. I knew that it was not par­tic­u­larly easy; I have attempted to make a sim­ple pop-up greet­ing card once and it did not go well. The always lovely Simon Wild was able to shed some light on a pop-up book (such as his!) is constructed:

A book is first story boarded in 2D, after which a paper engi­neer turns the draw­ings into a 3D pro­to­type. After there is an idea of how ele­ments will trans­late, addi­tional 3D ele­ments are added, then a sec­ond pro­to­type cre­ated. This ver­sion includes “die lines” , which will be a way for the cor­rect lay­out to be deter­mined and cut out. The sec­ond pro­to­type is vital because it ensures that the book will be work­ing well mechan­i­cally. After that, the final ver­sion is cre­ated with full color and art­work, and later proofed and tested for strength. The process ends with the book on the shelf!

There are a lot of dif­fer­ent pop-up books avail­able, but most are fairly lack­lus­ter in their engi­neer­ing and cre­ativ­ity. I really enjoy the books that uti­lize a more cre­ative use of paper engi­neer­ing, which are what I think these books do. I own 600 Black Spots and it’s a great book; it’s not your typ­i­cal pop-up; while a lot of books tend to rely on a more struc­tured con­struc­tion, 600 Black Spots lets the 3D pieces wave back and forth and really have a mind of their own.

1 // Simon Wild 2 // Popville 3 // 600 Black Spots 4 // Mommy?