about
It all started with a story called the polar bear on the roof, it was going to be the next big hit, sell a million copies and its environmental message would demand that it be produced in a manner that complimented that message - lay flat design, made in Ireland from recycled paper & printed with restraint. With these needs a book design was created that we call badly made books... locally produced, tape-bound, post-consumer waste paperbacks with blank pages for you to tell your own story.
...the polar bear on the roof still remains unfinished.
the name badly made books origianted as the name of an illustration portfolio by artist & business founder Seán Ó Sullivan who was only beginning to learn how to make books when we set up the website and shop to showcase his artwork. As a lifelong ran of reading with a degree in industrial design Seán started to become more interested in the design and production of books than the content that went inside but every process takes time to learn, mistakes will, inevitably, be made resulting in some genuinely badly made books all of which carried their own lessons to be learned.
these days we are asked 'why are these called badly made when they look well made to me?' the answer it that our freshest books are named in honour of all the busted & broken books, mistreated mishaps & misaligned margins, brave & bad ideas that have come before them.
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proudly saying badly made we ask our customers to compromise. we choose to use recycled papers, we choose to make locally & we choose to print with restraint. these choices come with their own challenges and sometimes means that our books are not, shall we say classically trained but unique in their own individual flaws - brown paper packing tape bisects your notes every 28 pages, the spine is sometimes a bit broken, sometimes one of the lines might lose a little focus but we ask you to accept these badly made mishaps, even delight in their imperfections safe in the knowledge that being perfect is a wasteful habit that we don't really have the time to indulge in these day.
