I am reading Books For Our Time. This collection, published in 1951, presents essays from well- known book designers (from the first half of the 20th century) on what a book is and can be. Book design examples follow the essays. The examples still look relatively traditional compared to today, but they show glimmers of page expiramentation to come.
Book designer John Begg, defines a book as “a three dimensional container for ideas.” He goes on to say, “It was devised as one of the prime means of conveying ideas and images to others in another time or place. In it the desire to communicate has been given enduring form.”
Book designer, Ernst Reichl writes similarly, “Not type and paper, but words and pictures and ideas are his [or her] materials, and the space in which to coordinate them. The purpose of a book is not to be well printed, but to be well comprehended. Le Corbusier calls the house a machine for living. Let me call the book a machine for the preservation of ideas.” Afterwards he amends the term “machine for the preservation of ideas,” by calling books instead, “the memory of [hu]mankind”
Architect, George Nelson, contributed the outsider perspective in his essay. He sums up the evolving definition of the book by saying, “what has changed is the feeling about what one should do to a page, a spread, a binding.”