Sitting in PSFK’s Good Ideas Salon, listening to Coralie Bickford-Smith talking about beautiful hardback designs bringing back the idea of the book as a treasured object.

Even with the paperback editions right next door, they still sold.

The digital age, currently succeeding that of mechanical reproduction, polarises the post-bit atom and the commoditised idea. Objects, gigs, the irreducibly analogue product has gone from fetish object to ‘affordable luxury’.

So publishing as big business might be on its way out…but then we might see an explosion in micro-imprints making beautiful things.

Edit: everyone on the design panel is invoking the ‘made thing’, the post-bit atom, the backlash against mass-produced downloadable stuff as the thing of the future. How can we consume less, live in a world that isn’t just about seduction?