Ever since the release some six or so years ago of the Volume-designed ReadyMade: How to Make {Almost} Everything book, imitations of its packaging have been appearing fairly frequently. Same yellow spine tape, same exposed chipboard, same letterpress and foil stamp. The four books in the image above are just the ones we’ve seen in our everyday perusing. Ironies abound here. Our work appears in Fingerprint 2 but the ReadyMade book it overtly references was not included. Two other imitations are in the same crafty sphere of interest ReadyMade occupies. Maybe some credit must be given, then, to the final remaining book for at least having nothing to do with us or DIY culture. But, geez, guys could you have at least changed the color of the spine tape to something other than yellow?
Are we just being grumpy, or is this just par for the course in our current sample-happy culture? Are these imitative examples outright laziness or knowing winks? If nothing is really original anymore, who cares? Refer to our original and judge for yourself.