The Book of Imaginary Beings
2021
For this special Anglo-Argentine project, design students from Cambridge School of Art and Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, worked together to celebrate the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges and his timeless Book of Imaginary Beings.
Each student was tasked with visualising one of the 120 creatures described in Borges’ book. To achieve these works of ‘mythographic design’ we took our lead from Borges himself: ‘An imaginary being is no more than a combination of parts of real beings, and the possibilities of permutation border on the infinite.’ Our designers worked in just the same way, collaging their imaginary beings from the parts of existing images (all in the public domain, sourced from that most Borgesian of libraries, the Internet) — and recycling, repurposing, and reassembling them into vivid new iterations.
2021
For this special Anglo-Argentine project, design students from Cambridge School of Art and Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, worked together to celebrate the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges and his timeless Book of Imaginary Beings.
Each student was tasked with visualising one of the 120 creatures described in Borges’ book. To achieve these works of ‘mythographic design’ we took our lead from Borges himself: ‘An imaginary being is no more than a combination of parts of real beings, and the possibilities of permutation border on the infinite.’ Our designers worked in just the same way, collaging their imaginary beings from the parts of existing images (all in the public domain, sourced from that most Borgesian of libraries, the Internet) — and recycling, repurposing, and reassembling them into vivid new iterations.
Tutors: Nicholas Jeeves, Danielle Rippengill (CSA); Enrique Longinotti, Clara de Olano (UTDT)
Thanks to: Milagros Acosta, Marta Almeida, Cargo, Luciana Gerac, Alex Markman, Laura Santamaria, Claudia Walls
Thanks to: Milagros Acosta, Marta Almeida, Cargo, Luciana Gerac, Alex Markman, Laura Santamaria, Claudia Walls
︎︎︎ Visit the project website