TM's algorithmically-arranged design for Fedrigoni 365/2021 means no two books are the same

Each year, leading paper manufacturer Fedrigoni and London-based studio TM invite UK-based designers, illustrators and photographers to contribute to the spectacle that is Fedrigoni 365 – an annual calendar that thrives on a sense of community. Usually filled with 365 contributors in reference to the book’s primary function, 2021’s editions are instead permeated with just shy of 1000 individual designs, inspired by a desire to be as inclusive as possible amid the COVID-19 pandemic. How can 1000 designs fit into 365 days you may ask – with the solution lying in Fedrigoni’s range of digital papers and intelligent five-colour printing from Ricoh’s Pro C7200X machine. As a result, each 416-page OTA-bound book within the 4000 copy print run is entirely unique – from cover-to-cover. To cater for such variability, Fedrigoni and TM had to present contributors with an even more constrained brief than previous years. Instead of a specific date, every creative was assigned a number from 1-31 and one of a multitude of seed words to act as an inspirational starting point. Three hundred and sixty-five of the resulting designs were then algorithmically compiled from the overall pool of submissions into each book, with no fixed running order or preferences applied.