Problem solver does not judge a book by its cover

“I feel like I’m juggling plates in the air. I work day and night,” says Irma Boom, book designer and founder of Irma Boom Office, in Amsterdam. Attending Business of Design Week for the second time, Boom gives as many lectures and talks as she can, as a mechanism to get her away from her desk.

Despite her current work, Boom first attended painting school. “I think as an artist there is a necessity to create. I don’t have that; I need the starting spark to come from someone else. I’m always working because I make very individual books, which is time-consuming,” says Boom, who calls herself a designer.

The spark that Boom needs is found in the content. “I always start with doubt, so I read – that helps me to collaborate with the person commissioning the project,” she explains. Referring to the relationship as collaboration, Boom requires freedom when she works. “Even at school, the most important thing is freedom – for that, you need trust. That creates a lot of responsibility. If I don’t have that, I don’t do the project because it won’t work,” she admits. Boom says that students must remain true to themselves.

To find such convictions, students and designers alike need a good argument for what they do. “To express yourself, you need to know why you are proposing the idea, then there is no question,” Boom says. She doesn’t discuss things like colour, because she believes that the content is more important. And she has thought deeply about the notion of a book. “I hate PDFs,” she says. “Books are physical objects. The architecture of a book is about size and proportion and the distribution of text,” she theorises.