Special presentation: The fascinating world of the Arctic Circle captured in a book made of ice

As of now, the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen is showing a particularly cool exhibit – and “cool” is really meant in the literal sense here: PYRY (Finnish for “flurry of snow”) is the title of a book that consists to a great extent of ice. What makes this work so special are the ice-covered book pages, which bring the theme of the book, the beauty of the Arctic Circle, impressively to life. Its designer, 24-year-old Marie-Luise Charlotte Weier from Bad Neustadt, was awarded the Red Dot: Junior Prize, worth 10,000 euros, for the best work by a young designer within the Red Dot Award: Brands & Communication Design 2023. The book, which comprises seven pages and weighs 12 kg, is presented in a freezer display case.

Fragile beauty
PYRY is an artistic book about the cold. Frozen book pages allow the beauty of the Arctic Circle to appear through a thin layer of ice and at the same time symbolise its fragility. In order to maintain this beauty, efforts are required – for the book, it is sufficient to ensure a permanent temperature of zero degrees centigrade. However, greater measures are needed to protect the eternal ice. PYRY impressed the jury of the international design competition in several respects: “In terms of content, the aesthetic photographs as well as their message could hardly be more intensely staged and experienced haptically. In terms of form, the special aesthetics of the risography and the technical realisation of the ice-covered pages are fascinating,” according to the jury.

Challenging production
Marie-Luise Charlotte Weier was inspired to create this work by her experience of extreme cold of up to minus 38 degrees centigrade during a semester abroad at the University of Lapland. She captured the beauty and uniqueness of the icy surroundings in photographs, which she put on paper using risography. This is a stencil printing process that is similar to screen printing and in which one colour can be printed per print pass. Risography enjoys great popularity in art and design due to its affordability, environmental friendliness and characteristic aesthetics. “The colour separation gave me the idea of printing the front in one colour, in Steel Blue, and the back in two colours, in Marine Red, Aqua or Sunflower. This is how the translation of the harsh, extreme moment of freezing succeeded – only in the retrospective, when turning the page, does the whole picture emerge,” explains the designer.

The production of the book involved a number of challenges to ensure that the book is stable and the pages do not break or freeze together. “It was a long process of experimentation, patience and iterance,” says Weier. “During my stay in the Arctic Circle, I took part in a course on designing and building ice sculptures – that at least opened the doors to ice as a material.”

Following her dual media design studies at the DHBW Ravensburg, Weier is currently completing her master’s degree in Contextual Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven.

PYRY – Artistic book made of ice
Design: Marie-Luise Charlotte Weier, Bad Neustadt, Germany
University: Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW), Germany Ravensburg, Media Design degree programme

Video on the work