Gutenberg Galaxie III
︎ Book Design
︎ Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Frances Loeb Library
︎ 2023
︎︎︎ Justin Hailey and Michael Mayer
︎︎︎ The Book in the Age of...
︎ Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Frances Loeb Library
︎ 2023
︎︎︎ Justin Hailey and Michael Mayer
︎︎︎ The Book in the Age of...
Gutenberg Galaxie III is a monumental, tri-fold elephant folio created in collaboration with Justin Hailey and Michael Mayer for the exhibition “The Book in the Age of ….” The book unfolds to nearly nine feet in width, comprising three foldable sections that trace the intertwined history of books and bookmaking across three epochs: the hand, the press, and the machine.
From the tactile intimacy of manuscript production, through the mechanical revolution of movable type, to the algorithmic systems shaping contemporary publishing, Gutenberg Galaxie III examines how each technological threshold has redefined not only the materiality of the book but also its cultural and political significance. The work references Marshall McLuhan’s argument that Gutenberg’s press created not merely a Bible but an entire “Gutenberg Galaxy”—a typographic global village whose media expanded from print to radio, television, and the Internet.
Presented as part of The Book in the Age of …, an exhibition showcasing the outcomes of an intensive research seminar co-taught by Irma Boom, Phillip Denny, and Rem Koolhaas at Harvard GSD, the project contributes to a collective inquiry into the future of the book. While today’s arsenal of production technologies has rendered books more accessible than ever, their significance remains in flux. If the illuminated manuscript was a product of the medieval world, what new form of book might correspond to the technologies and politics of our era? Or, to put the question more bluntly, what is the book in the age of globalization?
This work, at once an archive, an object, and a conjecture, embodies an ongoing exploration into what the book has been—and what it might yet become.
From the tactile intimacy of manuscript production, through the mechanical revolution of movable type, to the algorithmic systems shaping contemporary publishing, Gutenberg Galaxie III examines how each technological threshold has redefined not only the materiality of the book but also its cultural and political significance. The work references Marshall McLuhan’s argument that Gutenberg’s press created not merely a Bible but an entire “Gutenberg Galaxy”—a typographic global village whose media expanded from print to radio, television, and the Internet.
Presented as part of The Book in the Age of …, an exhibition showcasing the outcomes of an intensive research seminar co-taught by Irma Boom, Phillip Denny, and Rem Koolhaas at Harvard GSD, the project contributes to a collective inquiry into the future of the book. While today’s arsenal of production technologies has rendered books more accessible than ever, their significance remains in flux. If the illuminated manuscript was a product of the medieval world, what new form of book might correspond to the technologies and politics of our era? Or, to put the question more bluntly, what is the book in the age of globalization?
This work, at once an archive, an object, and a conjecture, embodies an ongoing exploration into what the book has been—and what it might yet become.