Confident that a market for print books remains, publishers are investing in design and production that distinguish printed books as desirable objects. Read MoreWriting
Books are object to be read but also totems that tell stories about us through their physical presence in our lives. Favourite books line our living spaces, their spines display titles and authors that communicate something about us to our guests, and remind us of worlds we have inhabited through reading. Read MoreWriting
Publishing is the process of getting the author’s story out of her or his head and into the hands of a reader. Authors don’t write books, they write manuscripts. Publishing is the process of getting an author’s manuscript into the hands of a reader, by materialising it – giving it… Read MoreWriting
In 2020, I wrote these book making briefs as ‘structured play’ for my honours students to help them think through making, and also shared them through the Australian Book Designers Association instagram site as a design version of ‘guided meditations’ during the loneliest (for many) phase of… Read MoreWriting
Digital Culture Talk, National Library of Australia 9 December, 2014 Event blurb: How we read has been evolving since the advent of the internet and mobile devices now mean a good read is never more than a tap away. Rich media, e-books, new channels and other technological… Read MoreWriting
What I have come to realise is this: electronic books can do certain things that print books cannot, and therein lies their value. Enhanced electronic books are changing our definition and expectations of books. Read MorePage screen books
This book documents my research at the MoMA Library looking at, among other things, Edward Ruscha’s artist’s books. Through writing, thumbnail sketches and photographs, I explain how I accidentally became obsessed with Ruscha’s Twenty-six Gasoline Stations, a photobook that follows Route 66 between Oklahoma and Los Angeles. In response to… Read MorePage screen books
I designed this anthology live at the Sydney Writers’ Festival over 5-days, inviting audiences to watch the book design process in action via a screen attached to my laptop. I set the grid, style guide and commissioned some illustrations beforehand, with 17 illustrations created live by myself and others. Part… Read MoreExhibition
The Book of Days is a publishing experiment. During the 2015 Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF) I edited and designed a festival anthology live, on site at the Walsh Bay precinct. The anthology includes writing and illustrations from festival presenters, as well as contributions from the festival audience. The book was… Read MoreWriting
Books On Demand is an exhibition of illustrated books produced using print-on-demand services. Also exhibited are some of the prototypes and experiments created through my design process. Print-on-demand services allow anyone with a computer and credit card to quickly and cheaply self-publish a book. The process is simple: the publisher… Read MorePage screen books
For my undergraduate honours project I wrote and designed a book about the future of books in the digital age. It’s written as a conversation between a print book and digital book in a bar. Print book is drowning his sorrows because everyone thinks he’s dying. Digital book is drinking… Read MoreDesign
A collaboration between the Australian Book Designers Association and Emerging Writers Festival, fifteen book designers each responded to a story shortlisted for the 2018 Monash Prize for Undergraduate Writing. The large format street posters were plastered around Melbourne’s CBD for the duration of the Festival. Read MorePage
Zoë Sadokierski is a designer, writer, creative producer and associate professor in Visual Communication at the UTS School of Design. Her practice-based research explores ways that visual communication – particularly illustrated nonfiction, data storytelling and anarchival collage – can be used to engage audiences with complex scientific… Read MoreWriting
I met photographer, book maker and writer Daniel Milnor through Garry Trinh, while doing events on the indie publishing circuit. Dan and I have had several inspiring conversations about self publishing, book design and creativity. When he was last in Sydney he recorded one for his podcast… Read MoreWriting
Originally published in The Book of Days: An anthology of the 2015 Sydney Writers Festival (2015), from a talk given during the festival I’m going to begin by talking about an orange I bought in Japan. The orange was on display in a… Read MoreWriting
The article aims to illustrate ways authors have experimented with typographic devices to literary affect, and to encourage more experimentation with word-image interplay as a storytelling device. Read MoreExhibition
Martha, the last Passenger Pigeon, died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. In the decades before her death, Passenger Pigeons numbered in the billions; flocks of migrating pigeons darkened the sun for days at a time. Within two human generations, hunting and habitat destruction drove this species to extinction. These 60… Read MoreWriting
In 2020, I joined the Urban Field Naturalist Project, along side Field Philosopher Thom van Dooren, ecologists Dieter Hochuli and John Martin, and fellow designer Andrew Burrell. The project provides resources to help people notice wildlife in urban environments, and turn these observations into shareable stories. In… Read MoreDesign
Natural Things in Early Modern Worlds is a collection of essays (written by international historians) and original visualisations (created by Katie Dean and myself) which explore the relationships among natural things – ranging from pollen in a gust of wind to a carnivorous pitcher plant to a shell-like skinned… Read MoreExhibition
This video work accompanies a visual essay titled ‘Avian Climate Messengers’ which Timo Rissanen and I created for the Climate Domesday project in 2022. It is part of our ongoing Precarious Birds project, through which we experiment with ways to address biodiversity loss/threats through our creative… Read MorePage screen books
A ‘contextual portfolio’ which documents an ongoing research project in which I design scientific-looking diagrams based on science fiction novels. This reveals the design research, thinking and practice behind two diagrams based on Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel On The Beach and George Turner’s 1987 novel The Sea and Summer. See… Read MoreExhibition
Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy is set in a near-future post-apocalyptic age, in which anthropogenic climate change and bio-engineering have catastrophically altered the earth’s ecosystem and inhabitants. As Atwood tells it, humans are directly responsible for mass extinction of plant and animal species, and have unleashed genetically modified creatures… Read MoreExhibition
End Game, Part One: Possible Cost of Complacency is the result of conversations Todd McMillan and I had while tinkering in a research studio at UTS. Todd was pairing excerpts from science fiction with photographs taken on a recent trip to Antarctica, while I created collages based… Read MoreDesign
These are the first seven books in the third series of Australian poet’s collections, published by Cordite Books. There are 10 books per series, the books are published incrementally through the year as they are completed and edited – one challenge is designing a series look without… Read MoreExhibition
Gallery blurb: ‘End Game’ is an ongoing collaboration between Todd McMillan and Zoë Sadokierski through which the artists attempt to understand widespread apathy toward environmental issues. The prints in ‘End Game Part 1: Possible Cost of Complacency’ (June 2017) explored nonchalance towards human-induced climate change. No less ambitious or bleak, ‘End Game Part 2: Sleep Well’ focuses… Read MoreDesign
The brief was to create a series design that could be applied to 4-5 books a year, with a preference for minimalist designs, strong lines and bold colours, and this description of Cordite as a brand: Cordite has become known as something modern, contemporary, progressive, a little daffy but also… Read MoreExhibition
For about three years I made almost daily ‘visits’ to a troupe of wild monkeys in the Nagano region of Japan, via a live webcam that updates every minute. When I needed a moment of calm at the computer, I would tune into our primate cousins soaking in an… Read MoreDesign
Four covers designed for the Viva La Novella competition, run by the Seizure collective. Sponsored by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, four emerging editors chose a novella each from the 150 entries, and work with their chosen author through ‘an intensive development and editorial process’. These four books are wildly different in… Read MoreWriting
(Another Book) After Ed-werd Rew-shay Written, illustrated and designed in one week by Zoë Sadokierski. Printed on the Espresso Book Machine in about 5 minutes, at McNally Jackson bookstore. 52 Prince Street, NYC. 68pp paperback, A5 (148 x 210mm) Mono interior, colour cover… Read MoreWriting
New York Public Library 5th Ave at 42nd St, NYC Wednesday 25 March 2015 www.nycitylib.com I enter through Bryant Park, a green (sort of, it’s a cold and barren Spring so far) oasis in the middle of the densest part… Read MoreDesign
‘Memory Makes Us’ is a project run by IF:Book Australia in which authors write stories live at festivals, inspired by written memories contributed by the audience. The brief: collate twelve stories written at MMU events between 2013-15 as a ‘book’ in cheap broadsheet format, exploring the notion that memories are… Read MorePage screen books
Analogue Bodies,Vol. 1: Feet and Teeth is a collection of essays about feet and teeth by Tom Lee, materialised as an illustrated book by Zoë Sadokierski, using archival images from the public domain. The original edition is a set of five hand-bound books which were exhibited at the Emerging… Read MorePage screen books
I made this little book as part of an ongoing collaboration with Tom Lee. Tom writes essays about body parts which I am turn into illustrated books – the first essays on Feet and Teeth were published as Analogue Bodies Vol. 1. As a challenge to myself, I decided to illustrate Tom’s… Read More
