Content area
Full text
The Neiman Marcus Pop Up Book pushed the design, image capture and post-production skills of photographer Geof Kern and his collaborators to the very limit. Story by Kristina Feliciano.
TO CELEBRATE ITS 100TH ANNIVERSARY, NEIMAN MARCUS COMMISSIONED, of all things, a pop-up book. Creative director Tim Flannery hired well-known photographer Geof Kern, who has worked with Neiman's for years, for the project, which was inspired by a vintage pop-up book that an executive at the Dallas-based luxury retailer kept in her office. Kern knew nothing about pop-up books, but that didn't stop him from giving it a go. "I respect Neiman's, and I respect them for even thinking about something like this," says Kern. "Nobody else does."
Little did he know that the Neiman Marcus Pop Up Book would turn into a two-year-long test of his problem-solving skills, as well as those of renowned Netherlands-based paper engineer Kees Moerbeek and Mary Brandt and her team at Imaginary Lines, the Terrell, Texas-based digital-imaging company she co-founded. Most, if not all, pop-up books are made from existing imagery-usually illustrations-that can be tailored as needed. But for this project, they were creating the book from custom-made photographs whose integrity had to be maintained. They literally had their work cut out for them.
"Neiman Marcus is known for its photography, which is why we knew we wanted to push and create the pop-up book out of pictures rather than drawings," says Flannery. "It required a lot of coordination and back and forth with Kees, but it was worth the effort. There is nothing like the scale and quality of this book."
Remarkably, given the time invested and a budget of close to $1 million, the book consists of only seven spreads: "Butterflies" (a Neiman's icon),"Fashion," "His and Hers Gifts," "Fashion Fortnight," "Christmas," "Art Collection" (in honor of the works amassed by the store's founder, Stanley Marcus) and "Future." Displaying the trust they have developed over the years, Flannery simply gave Kern the list of themes and asked him to come up with ways to illustrate them.
The Dallas photographer is accustomed to working out his photo concepts via sketches,...