Manual: The Manual: Rethinking Inefficient Disciplines of Efficiency

Catalogue Raisonné

A book, by its definition, may not have changed very much over the past decade but the environment around it dramatically have. Most of my books are no longer from the corner bookstore but delivered home by Amazon through UPS. Same approach was applied to my MFA thesis book, a partial requirement for the degree, to submit three copies.

The process was designed to have the book purchased from Amazon and delivered through UPS to three different destinations on the due date: the graphic design administration office at Yale School of Art, Haas Family Arts Library Special Collections, and Yale MFA Graphic Design Show.

Visit Amazon's Product Page

This book is available exclusively through Amazon.com and available for pre-order starting March 30, 2009. The shipping materials delivered with this book are considered parts of the book.

The specifications of this book were derived from the average values of the one thousand most recent paperback publications available through Amazon.com as of February 15, 2009. For purposes of production and distribution, the dimensions are rounded off to the closest standard (A5) and the page count to the closest multiple of four.

— Preface, Manual: The Manual

The book was designed using LaTeX and printed by LuLu with their on-demand printing service. After purchasing copies from Lulu, they were shipped to Amazon's warehouse. The ISBN is generously given by the Winterhouse in order to have the book officially sold in Amazon. Due to the complex logistics and miscalculation, the production cost exceeded the MSRP. Therfore only handful of copies were produced, sold and purchased. Amazon's product detail page is still up and indicates that there is one more copy of the book in its warehouse.

Thanks to Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel to make this happen.