Birmingham-based designer Lee Crutchley (opens in new tab) has finally turned his personal collection of quotes and sketches from the Quoteskine website into a fascinating new book: Quoteskine Volume 1.
As Lee explains in the book's preface, he first came up Quoteskine (opens in new tab) as a way to keep himself busy after spending a year travelling - and then struggling to find a job on his return to recession-hit Britain. In the preface Lee says:
"Inspired by my trip I wanted to do something I loved, just for the sake of doing something I loved. I have always loved drawing, so that seemed a good place to start. And since I was about 14 I've written down quotes or lyrics that I like, in fact I have shoe boxes full of scraps of paper with them on.
"So combining those two things seemed like the perfect project. I set out to draw a quote every weekday in my Moleskine sketchbook (opens in new tab)."
Quoteskine goes viral
Lee readily admits that he didn't have a long-term plan, but his work on Quoteskine was picked up by a number of design websites around the world - and the popularity of its content quickly snowballed.
After 18 months, Lee was inspired to embark on his next project: which was to turn the best bits of the Quoteskine website into a book. The result is now available to buy for $22 from the Quoteskine online shop (opens in new tab).
As you have no doubt already realised, Lee's been very canny with his name for the book, which suggests that Volume 2, 3 and several others could eventually appear at some point.
For now though we seriously recommend that you take a look at the book - it's available to read (opens in new tab) on the Quoteskine website - and then go grab yourself a copy. You should also make a point of bookmarking and then visiting Quoteskine on a regular basis: It's still being updated with new, beautiful and poignant sketches.
