1982 is a limited edition artist book by Rhea Karam, published in 2025 by Small Editions. It features a custom-cast concrete brick slipcast, typeset in English Egyptian by Abyme.

1982 is the year that artist Rhea Karam was born. In the same year, her family fled Beirut and moved to the United States to escape the war in Lebanon. All that remains of her family’s visual records of that year is a single photo album with 67 photographs, depicting birthday celebrations; meals with family and neighbours; fabric, furniture, and toys adorning a childhood bedroom.

1982 is an artists’ book that contains photographs from that album, juxtaposed beside images of walls from Beirut and New York City, where Karam now lives and works. Family photographs portray details of a house that no longer exists as such; photographs of walls portray textures and colours of two vibrant, complicated cities. Using the double-page spread, or the dual recto-verso relationship, Karam creates a charge between past and present, between life before and after displacement, and invites readers to imagine a third, unseen space between the two. All books in the edition are different, as each contains a unique sequence and selection of images. The album – in its full, original form – can only be reconstructed by combining all 67 books side by side.

1982 is a continuation of Karam’s broader artistic interest in walls, which she has been photographing and studying for the past 20 years. For 1982, she wanted to create a wall of her own: each of the 67 books are housed within a concrete brick slipcase, sturdy enough to be stacked on top of each other but ultimately intended to be dismantled and scattered.

Brick fabrication by Baylor Ward
Variable Edition of 67 + 2AP

Small Talks is an in-person event series hosted by Small Editions. Small Talks is about books: designing books, making books, publishing books, selling books, distributing books, collecting books. Each Small Talk will explore one theme in detail. Small Talks will invite a myriad of book-ish folks to speak about projects, practice, and contemporary issues in book-making. Small Talks will be short, sweet, cozy, and informal, and will take place at our studio in Brooklyn. Everyone is welcome.

Small Editions created the overall identity and event visuals for the talk series, set in Rockwell Bold Condensed from Monotype.

Art direction and branding for Small Editions, a design studio, print consultancy, and artist book publisher based out of Brooklyn, NY.

The branding uses Circular by Lineto.

The Japanese font used on the one-off branded cards made for a trip to Tokyo is Shin Maru Go.

Rhea Karam is an artist based in New York, NY. Her branding and website uses Pirelli by Jung Lee Type Foundry and Article Text by Matter of Sorts. Pirelli is distinguished by its unusually high-waisted capitals. The capital R is especially striking, making it the perfect font for Rhea’s wordmark.

Paper and Ink is both a technical and theoretical resource for anyone wanting to use paper and printing to shape the message, atmosphere, and concept of a book. It’s centered around the idea that various aspects of a book – paper, end papers, thread, ink, special finishes, folding structure and cover material – all belong to the book as much as its content, and it’s the designer who brings everything together under one cohesive plan. This requires not only material sensitivity, but also an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of book production.

Paper and Ink is our attempt to share the knowledge our studio has amassed through 150+ book projects over the past five years. Because it’s impossible to truly understand paper or printing without feeling and seeing it in front of you, the book includes swatches from many of those projects – leftovers from accidents, readymade, or surplus.

The entire edition is printed, collated, and bound by hand. Each book contains different swatches, meaning each book is unique and imperfect by nature.

Published by Small Editions in an edition of 500. Written and designed by Isobel Chiang.
Printed by Small Editions with help from Caslon Yoon. Binding by Michelle Ho. Typeset in Sabon and Monotype Grotesque.

Moraine is an expanded interpretation of an untitled, one-of-one artist book made by Corey Antis. Conceived as an atlas of various sites in the West Bottoms of Kansas City, the book comprises of original drawings made by ink frottage on 9gsm Tengujo paper. The prints act as a 1:1 map and a geological cross-section of areas soon to be built over, refurbished, or erased as the city’s former stockyard undergoes redevelopment. Made on exquisitely delicate and transparent pages, these original drawings of industrial landscapes are made available to a select number of readers.

Moraine, produced in an edition of 20 books + 2APs, allows the original atlas to be experienced by a wider audience. The book is letterpress printed on 15gsm Sekishu paper and hardcover bound with hand-backed silk covers. Moraine adds a new dimension to Antis’ ongoing project investigating site, sensation, and legibility.

The book concept is by Corey Antis, Isobel Chiang, and Hannah Pierce (Small Editions) and was designed by Isobel Chiang with Hannah Pierce, using ABC Marist by Dinamo and Gerstner-Programm FSL by Forgotten Shapes. Letterpress printing by Sarah Nicholls, Habotai Silk backing by Sarah Smith, polymer plates by Boxcar Press, and file separations by Kathleen Collins. Sarah Nicholls provided the binding, with custom cases designed by Michelle Ho. Moraine was published by Small Editions

You can watch a flip-through video of the book.