What is Biblichor? In a word it’s a smell. Walk into a library or a second-hand bookshop and your first breath will fill your sense with paper, glue, ink, leather, cloth, perhaps a touch of dust and mildew. You wouldn’t describe it as a perfume – it’s much too earthy and organic for that – but it is a very particular aroma. For Gavin Peebles, this is the smell of a happy place. In fact, so much so, he named his company after it.
As an experienced typesetter there isn’t much Gavin doesn’t know about the designing, the setting and the production of books – the more complicated the subject, the more he likes it. Having mastered his trade, and after many years working for some of the most established companies in the industry, he decided it was time to go it alone, at which point he approached us to create a brand identity that would bring his smelly idea to life.
The result was yet another collaboration with Illustrator Iain McIntosh. Together we sought to evoke the qualities and qwerks you will recognise of beautiful old books – lavishly produced; handmade endpapers; casebound works of art that would sit proudly on the finest of bookshelves, and then marry this with a sharp contemporary typographical approach reflective of the modern reality. Mix in some playful prose, traditional print techniques, wrap the lot in bold colours and the good ship Biblichor was ready to set sail.
illustrator Iain McIntosh
website biblichor.co.uk