Kubo Shu

Book Design

This book design project features the work of Japanese kirie artist Kubo Shu. Kirie (pronounced kiri-ay) is the Japanese art of papercutting. It looks similar to stained glass and involves using a sharp blade to cut intricate designs into paper to be used as the foreground. The cut paper is then laid over colored paper to create an image. I had a unique opportunity to work with Kubo Shu during a workshop at Drexel, so I chose to showcase him here. A key feature of this book is the laser cut replicas of his work. Inclusion of the laser cut images allows the reader to directly experience Kubo Shu’s art in a way that a two-dimensional image would not.