A Book-Tile Poster

One thing I missed, after I started to read and store e-book fiction only, was looking at the books themselves. They didn't gather dust, they had freed-up a lot of space and I didn't have a fire hazard but I did have a blank wall where my bookcase used to be. Books added a lot of colour and warmth to that wall and reminded me of pleasant things. Now I had nothing. Then one day I had an idea. What if I made a large, poster-size tile of the book covers? It would add colour to the room, and when I got close, I could actually see the individual book covers rather than just the spines on a normal bookcase. It looked great in my imagination. How would it fair in real life?

I could bring-up my paperbacks from the basement, line them up on the floor and photograph them. But why get stuck with covers I didn't like? Wouldn't it be nice to choose the book cover I liked the most for each book? I googled “great expectations charles dickens book cover” and chose 'images' rather than 'web'. Sure enough I got a large number of book covers as well as the image analysis when I hovered with my mouse over them. From these I picked the one I liked the most and downloaded it at the largest analysis available. It seemed simple enough so I printed a listing of all fiction books I had read and got started. When I couldn't decide between two covers, I downloaded both of them. Two days later I had a file with almost 250 book covers that I liked or was emotionally attached to.

Next I used Photoscape to combine them in tile form on a single jpeg file. Photoscape is a free, open source program that's almost as good as Photoshop, except it's free, and you can download and install it immediately. I played around with the various options available and made a tile with a width of 22 covers and a height of 10 in alphabetical order by book title. I also decided to have each cover on its original length to width ratio, and to blacken the space in between. My book covers had a variety of analysis from around 200x350 up to 2600x4200. Most of them however were just over 300x440. I decided that it was better to have a few covers appear a little smaller and have better clarity for most of them. It made sense to choose something around 300x440. I also decided to make my poster 1,50 x 1,00 meters, so to get those exact dimensions I refined by basic cell analysis to 296x434. I printed the corner of the poster in actual dimensions on letter sized paper and I was satisfied with the clarity.

Finding a printer and a frame took more effort. Photo shops gave me horrendous prices so I went directly to digital printers. Most could print to a maximum width of 1,30 meters and to any length and priced it less than 20 Euro per square meter. Framing it was also a problem. The largest frame available commercially is size B1 (1,0 m x 0,7 m) and even with thin glass it is both heavy and expensive. A custom job on a larger size would make it even more unattractive in both price and weight. I could buy poster rails or cover the edges with long plastic strips and directly nail it on the wall, but friends cautioned me that it wouldn't look very good. My printer recommended that if he printed it on a plastic base I could then mount it on a wooden frame, the same way artists mount their canvas paintings. Without glass protection it would be incredibly light and it could be easily cleaned with a dump cloth. The cost for the frame and the mounting was around 40 Euro.

The end result is awesome. I now have a 1,50 m by 1,00 m poster with 220 of my favourite book covers in a tile. Not only has it given even more colour and warmth to the room than the book spines but when you get close you can see each cover individually. Furthermore it is a highly personal poster and a work of art. In fact I am so excited by the whole thing that I have decided to cover more walls. Digital music has taken music albums out of our lives. Why not make a poster size tile of my favourite music albums? What about a tile of family photographs or photographs from your favourite movies? The possibilities are endless and the prices affordable.

Have fun!