Coats and Many Colors

The design choices of YES also honor Ono's own multimedia approach to art as both a performer and visual artist. The book and digital supplement compete with a strong online presence and the e-book market. Accordingly, Abrams has a 50-year history of publishing critical theory art books in the same market, including a pantheon of monographs featuring old and new masters. Abrams publishes and distributes approximately 200 titles annually and currently has more than 1,500 titles in print.

In response to Abrams recent gem, a long-time associate of Ono's, Francie Schwartz, recently wrote, "My copy of YES YOKO ONO arrived via Federal Express last week, and the moment I cut away the different [color] layers of bubble wrap I nearly gasped as if the thing were radioactive and glowing like something in a John Sayles movie. The following night I went through the sections again and the indexes and bibliography and footnotes. It was like an acid trip for me … I own hundreds of art books, and this is the best I've ever had. … Yoko's face circa mid-'60s is gazing at me from its deep foil dust jacket."

Turbulence

by Henrik Drescher

"It's not just the cover, it's the whole thing," says Pamela Geismar, design director at Chronicle Books. "It has die-cut holes in the cover, exposed boards—and most novel for us—complex laser-cut inserts."

Turbulence is the visual concept of Henrik Drescher, an illustrator and childrens' book author. In addition to Turbulence, he's produced several hand-bound artist's books and notebooks with Canary Press. The idea behind this latest project is to make the artist's images more tactile for a much wider audience.

Beth Steiner, production coordinator at Chronicle, explains, "The spine of the book is actually a paperback cover that extends over the entire book block. The spine is the only part of the paperback cover that is printed. For the sides, we separately printed four-color on a gloss stock and wrapped that over 2mm boards. The boards are then adhered to the paper back cover. Thus the boards are raised higher then the spine." She says, "When we initially conceived of the binding, we were basing the binding style on another Chronicle title, Evidence. The difference between Evidence and Turbulence is that Evidence has no paper wrapping the boards, so you see the gray board itself."