Lee Crutchley's Quoteskine Vol. 1

Birmingham-based designer Lee Crutchley 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 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."

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.

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 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.