One of my favorite projects I've had the privilege to design was the pocket-sized DaVinci notebook. This was created for The University of Utah as a free hand-out to all visitors of Gunther VanHagen's Body Worlds 3, hosted at the Leonardo on Library Square in Salt Lake City. Demand was high, and we re-printed the book mid-way through the exhibit run. A quarter-million books in total. The design was influenced by Red Horseshoe (dimensions, rounded corners); the art was all royalty-free images from DaVinci's sketchbooks. The cover stock is Smart Paper's Carnival Cordwain, which has a leather-like embossed surface. The insides are Mohawk, a soft white printed with gold metallic ink. The gold isn't overpowering, since it's an uncoated sheet, but it gives it the shimmer that you might get from lead and makes the piece too special to throw away. My moment of delight: going to lunch with a friend I hadn't seen in a year and she told me how her daughter got this free sketchbook at the Body World's exhibit and filled it up with sketches, 'cause Jessica may want to become a forensic artist. She thought that was the neatest thing. It was neater for me to hear.
