Beautiful Books

You don't make beautiful books. They exist. Already. In the air around you. The very air we learn to breathe. From the moment of our birth. Both acts of beauty; of aesthetics.

What we learn to do as we grow into the world is to recognize it. Through observing…this aesthetic. Hold it in the palm of our eyes; nurture it; make it our own. Not the own of ownership. Nor the hidden own of the possessive: This is 'mine'. I mean the ability that turns everyday presences of all that surrounds us into a thing of beauty. To be easily and simply shared with as many people as possible, through as many ways as possible.

It doesn't matter what it is. There is an aesthetic in nature. As there is in the grimy squalor of a crowded urban city. It doesn't matter.

Create your own frames. Place the good and the indifferent or downright ugly into it. Shift it around. Use the space in a manner hitherto unseen. Let the objects relate to each other. Or not. Let them oppose. In a tense and edgy relationship between them.

What is important is the response. First yours. To this 'thing' of beauty you are in the process of creating. Then others. The ones who will receive it. View it. Hold it in their eyes. And hands. And hearts. And minds. Once you un-cage the bird, let it go into the world. To stand on its own. And grow. And last – in our case as publishers and people of design.

The art and the craft of making something that lasts, lingers, resides inside us. Making beautiful books.

Naveen Kishore is the founder of Seagull Books originally founded in Kolkata with branches now in London and Chicago. He is led not by the market, but by personal convictions and passions. He spoke at Hay Festival Dhaka 2014 about his publishing practice which undermines ideological dominance and counteracts intolerance. The above extract was a reading taken from his panel, reprinted here with his permission.