ruben steeman compiles 7 years of drawings into 2500-page book
all images courtesy of ruben steeman

 

 

 

for many years ruben steeman has made one drawing a day on his personal website. with his 2500th creation came the idea to compile them into a book; full scale reproductions of the original illustrations made into an extremely massive collection. all publishers claimed that it was impossible because there are no machines capable of producing the necessary dimensions. but ruben did it anyway. he crowdfunded the project, searched for a binder to take up the challenge, and physically realized ‘2500 days of RuSt‘.

 


video courtesy of ruben steeman

 

 

 

the black and white pen drawings represent seven years of steeman’s daily life. going through the pages, readers can understand the artist’s mind and as look at a lot of visual humor, strange images, and small stories-in-one picture. as wide as it is thick, all these pieces combine into a hand-bound book with a laser cut cover weighing 3.5kg. this has brought up the fact that if you were to look at each individual drawing for ten seconds, it would take you seven hours to go through the entire book.

ruben steeman elk dag rust 2500 days of rust book
on every page there is one day, one drawing in pen and ink

ruben steeman elk dag rust 2500 days of rust book
the cover is lasercut

ruben steeman elk dag rust 2500 days of rust book
the typographic exterior illustration is peeled out of the cover linen

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everything in the book is hand drawn, even the colophon

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the book was crowdfunded at voordekunst.nl

 

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the drawings are made with pen and inkbrush without sketching 

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for an exhibition, all the 2500 drawings were printed on a 19m wide wall 

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the thickness of the book

 

 

project info:

 

publisher: RuSt, 31 october 2014
technical realization: tim beijer producties
printing: koninklijke wohrmann, (zutphen, the netherlands) on 80 grs biotop
binding: handboekbinderij geertsen (nijmegen, the netherlands)
lasercutting: IDlaser  (westzaan, the netherlands)
measurements: 22 x 15 x 15 cm
weight: 3.5 kg
pages: 2508

 

 

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.