Books—a fading ideal

This week we had World Book Day, which saw many children going to school dressed as movie characters; or so I assume, it's not that often I attend primary schools.

For a designer, books carry a currency that stands mountains above copper pennies and monarch embezzled paper slips—books, books and more books. If you are a good designer, you'll own all the books you can get your hands on and if you are a better designer, you'll be in those books.

The tactile nature and printing process go hand in hand with everything creatives dream about, leaving use with masses of bound paper that sit and look pretty on the shelf ,waiting for the next day that you have a creative block so they can find themselves sprawled over the floor, like a post-walkies labrador.

I had never really been a book owner until university, where then suddenly I was thrust upon with a list of books I should own, should have read and should buy in which to succeed on the course with—throwing me into the dark scary depths of correctly using a bookcase. Now, three years on, I have a real affinity with the printed page, lusting over my next book and stacking them anywhere that they'll both fit and not send the other half crazy.

Now, as I stand on my high horse I can snigger and jeer at the masses, for being so under-read, like 18th century lord looking out on his pasture, filled with illiterate peasants. But really, if I think back—I was exactly that. I didn't want to read, I own no books and I had no desire to—but why was that?

Because they weren't exciting enough for me.

Like every other boy, I had a games console, access to the internet and sack full of textbooks from school—once my 6 hours of pretending to understand biology, doodling in maths and giving 50% in PE was up, I wanted to go home, eat food and see something a little more exciting. I could always find something to entertain myself, almost instantly. Films, explosions and shooting polygons controlled by angry French men; all of which took very little focus of effort on my behalf, so like hell I was going to pick up Dickens and sit in silence for an hour or two.

Now, as I've grown older, the allure of video games has worn off and the potential for learning that is held within those design books, essays and journals shines a lot brighter; which I hope sticks around, as I'm a hopper. I hop from one thing to the next, spurring all my excitement into the next thing that I've found interest in. Perhaps books are just my current fad, but usually if it stick around for longer than a year, I can class it as more than one of my passing interests.

It's an ideal that we should all read, but it seems like only certain communities and industries have importance engrained into the sniffing of pages and the breaking of spines. Of the people I studied with, I could list a majority who valued reading highly but from my friendship circle of youth, I was almost amazed by the few who read—so much in fact, that my friend who had 20+ fantasy books upon his wardrobe was somewhat of an oddity to me – though quite fairly – he was always a lot smarter than I.

With purchasing these books I always find myself, doing as I was so wisely told not to do; judging a book by it cover and making my purchases almost exclusively based on it's aesthetic value. The theory is, if they've gone to the trouble of hiring a good designer, then the content of said book should mimic that—it works for the most part. But this privilege is mostly reserved for design books and the 'classics' of literature; I personally think my mother's bookshelf looks like a bloody awful mess of fifty colours and a thousand script typefaces, but she doesn't buy by the cover and likely reads me under the table, so what on earth do I know.

In a world where all information is instantly accessible and all entertainment is life-like, drenched in thrill and detail—it's certainly difficult to fight the corner for the humble book. For the younger generations – the children of the internet – the ideal of a silent study of printed paper is just that, an ideal. Let's just hope that we have a resurgence like the 'vinyl revival' even if it's realistically killing the market that's it's resuscitated. 

Perhaps the answer is better design, or a better public interest spurred by the design and suitability for the books. Or, perhaps we've just grown past them. They are no longer the largest resource for information; chipped down from their mighty pedestal of importance by Hyper Text Markup Languages. Books will always be prevalent for certain people and certain industries but that doesn't stop them fading as a whole, especially as we start to lose our elders—the safeguards of the printed word. Like art, as it loses it's respect, it loses it's footing; and now it stands on a blanket of ice reflecting the future generations that needn't own a bookshelf ever again.

Books; don't ever fade away, don't ever fade away.