Pop Art Meets Paper Engineering in Crowdfunded Pop-Up Art Book

Poposition Press founder Rosston Meyer discusses his successfully funded Kickstarter campaign and the challenges of printing three-dimensional books.

From images of stressed-out pandas to erotic pancakes, The Pop Up Art Book from Poposition Press is a visual feast for the reader. A picture book for grown ups, the project was conceived by editor and press founder Rosston Meyer, who has brought together six artists from various disciplines to create the book. We chatted with Meyer about his inspiration, his  Kickstarter campaign, and the challenges of printing a pop-up book.

Why the focus on pop-up books?

The focus on making artist pop-ups is a mix of two niches: contemporary street/pop/comic style art and pop-up books. All of the artists involved have seen their art on all sorts of products—apparel, home goods, designer toys—so to them the pop-up format is an exciting way to see their art. 

The Pop Up Art Book was successfully funded with $22,098 on Kickstarter in January 2015. Why do you think the idea appealed to backers on Kickstarter?

The Pop Up Art Book is a compilation-style book featuring pop ups created from six different artist’s work: Aaron ‘Woes’ Martin, Skinner, Kozyndan, Junko Mizuno, Tara McPherson and Jim Mahfood. The Kickstarter campaign was appealing to two different types of funders: existing fans of the artists involved, and Kickstarter browsers who were introduced to this art by seeing the campaign. About a third of the project’s backers came from browsing Kickstarter, so those are likely people that had no prior connection to the artists or to Poposition.

How difficult is it to design and produce a pop-up book?

They are complicated. Basically once the pop ups are designed a prototype is sent off, along with the art files, in order for the factory to provide an estimate. They’re concerned with the amount of paper used for the book and the number of glue points, which is any step that needs to be done to assemble a page. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s glue, it could be putting a tab into a slot, for example.

Once the green light is given to the factory, they create mock-up books in white to assure that they can replicate the pop-ups I designed without any issue. Once that’s approved, full color mock ups are made and sent back to me for a final review. One more approval step is needed before the book goes into production, which is a standard color check of the actual print outs. Printing and assembly in this case took about five weeks, and the books were delivered to backers this past summer.