We started by thinking about the core of a book. What is a book? What would it want in life? What would it hate? With this in mind we decided to create a book cover that could show the simple thoughts and emotions of a book.

All a book wants in life is to be read, looked at and cherished. It doesn’t want to stand on a book shelf and do nothing, it wants to be held. The more attention you give a book, the more it will shine and love you. But if you put it back on the shelve and forget about it the book will become sad and fade away.

From here we started exploring ways to create this. We integrated a movement sensor to know whether the book is being held or not. The book consists of four covers with illustrations covered with thermopaint. Under each cover we added copper wires that would heat the thermopaint when the book is held. As long as the book is being used the layers will heat up, from the inner to the outer layer. When it is alone again it slowly cools down and turns black once more.

We created a stand-alone book with all the technology hidden inside. People thought it was a magical book and were really attracted to it. They constantly picked the book up to give it more attention, so that it could show it's beautiful cover. Seeing it fade to black actually made some people sad.

It was a unique cover so only created for the vernissage. But after this we made a video to show it to the world and this resulted in many positive responses and requests whether people could actually buy it. It inspired.