Walking up the stairs

George

Third

Door Opens

Britt

Hello

George

Hello there

Britt

I was thinking… that’s not Mathew.

Laughing

Mathew

That’s not Mathew

Mathew

Cause it, it’s

Anna

Pastry?

Mathew

I suppose, and it is, the underlying impression is, why make narrative in book form now?

Britt

And why not in film form or screen form or…

Mathew

Something digital that can be consumed that way.

Britt

I guess, Do you want to go first?

Anna

No, you go. Laughing

Britt

I guess fundamentally, we love books as objects, and we also think that, the role of books in terms of storytelling has always been phenomenal and will continue to be phenomenal, but it needs to be happily and confidently living along side of other forms of storytelling. So one of the things that we find slightly bewildering is when people ask, “What’s the future of the book?” We get asked that so often, but they don’t ask us about the future of the Kindle or the future of the app and they will have all evolved. So in ten years time, all of them will be different. You will hopefully not have book apps with stupid curly corners and why do you pretend to be a book when you are on screen?

Mathew

Pages that animate and prentend to be books.

Britt

Yeah, you will hopefully have stuff from the Kindle that looks more visually appealing than currently. The ads you see for the kindle are like, “You don’t need reading glasses because you can make the type as big as you want". What? That’s not how I enjoy a book, by sitting and having big type. So I think all of those things will have evolved. But for us it’s about creating something beautiful that you can touch and feel and experience and you can share it or you can be intimate about it, depending on how you explore books.

Anna

But, I think it also taps into, just, kind of what we are like as people too. That there’s something quite appealing, strangely appealing about there being an industry that’s paralysed. So the publishing industry is sitting there scared out of their fucking minds going, you know, “What’s the… there is no future for us". And there’s something, we find that really exciting, actually, to see a whole industry terrified and it becomes a kind of opportunity. So, rather than seeing it as an obstacle it’s actually, hang on a second, there are so many talented writers, there are so many talented designers, so many talented film makers, who are still yearning for cultural, tangible objects, to tell stories.

Britt

And for creativity.

Anna

…and for creativity. And also to push those stories as far as we can go. So there’s a real playfulness too, which, is you know, I mean, that’s why we’re doing it. We’re not doing it for any other reason. It’s playing.

Britt

That as well, that’s the most important thing. The minute that we don’t have readers that want to buy our books then we are clearly getting it wrong, but at the moment if feels like there is a huge market out there but it’s about being creative about what you produce for them and actually how you get it out there, and that’s the really fun part.

Anna

It’s amazing.

Mathew

There’s something in that with the fact that these are your readers having a personal relationship with the publishing house.

Anna

We get amazing emails into our catch all email account called “hey at visual editions” and just last night actually, I was reading a fantastic email from this guy who said, “I bought tree of codes. It’s unbelievable. I love it so much. But it is just impossible to read. I just can’t read it. There’s something wrong with my copy.” and what transpired was that he couldn’t read it. He didn’t know how to actually physically read it. So he was trying to read it through the block of the whole book rather than lifting up each page.

Britt

So what you do is just like and old book, you would read it page by page, but you kind of have to lift it in order for the words to kind of come alive if you’d like.

Mathew

Do you think that there is a good chance that it will break through and get that visual side into people who aren’t expecting it? People that are familiar with the book and aren’t even familiar with the argument that the book industry is dying…

Definitely.

Mathew

…and consuming books and suddenly something new is coming along.

Anna

Yeah, I think that’s more interesting, isn’t it? That’s way more interesting than showing a design buff our books and I think that’s part of…

Britt

The ambition as well.

Anna

…the ambition, definitely.

Mathew

But I think I would say that when looking at any of the books that when you actually get it and it arrives, especially with the die-cut, the amount of people who have no conception of the printing process, any graphic designer that I’ve given that book to, they have the same reaction of, “Oh my god. You can print this.” and anyone else just kind of goes, “Oooh’.

Anna

"That’s nice. How do you read it?” Laughs

Britt

Yeah

Mathew

Is that frustrating at all?

Anna

No, I think it’s amazing.

Britt

It’s fun.

Anna

That’s the best bit.

Britt

But it is!

Anna

That’s what you do it for. You don’t do it for somebody to say, “Whoa, man, that took a lot of work, didn’t it?"

Britt

Because then they wouldn’t enjoy it.

Anna

You do it to see people smile.

Britt

I can’t remember who I heard it from, but somebody told us that you will not be remembered as a person for what you say, or for what you do, but for how you make people feel. And they should not ever feel the hardship of tracing it. You know, that’s what we should feel.

Anna

That’s for us to feel.

George

Super

Britt

Take care

Anna

Thank you

Mathew

Cheerio

George

Thank you very much, buh bye.