Tree of Codes is one of our most celebrated titles. It has won awards (D&AD In Book Award, Book Design, 2011) served as the inspiration for Wayne McGregor’s contemporary ballet at the 2015 Manchester International Festival and has sold over 30,000 copies.

Our early conversations with Jonathan Safran Foer about Tree of Codes began with Jonathan saying he was curious to explore and experiment with the die-cut technique. With that as our mutual starting point, we spent many months of emails and phone calls, exploring the idea of the pages’ physical relationship to one another and how this could somehow be developed to work with a meaningful narrative. This led to Jonathan deciding to use an existing piece of text and cut a new story out of it. Having considered working with various texts, Jonathan decided to cut into and out of what he calls his “favourite book”: The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz.

As Jonathan began to carve out his story, we started doing our production homework and literally got turned down by every printer we approached – their stock line being “the book you want to make just cannot be made”. Thankfully, we found Die Keure in Belgium who relished the challenge of making a book with a different die-cut on every page.

Designed by Sara De Bondt Studio
Cover designed by Jon Gray

Tree of Codes is currently out of stock. If the book becomes available again we’ll announce it through our newsletter.

Published November 2010
ISBN 978-0-9565692-1-9
Paperback
£25 / $40