Written by the cofounders of ReadyMade magazine, this is a book of all original material that revolves around the reuse of six building materials—paper, plastic, wood, metal, glass and fabric. This hybrid of how-to, editorial and historical content yielded a design that is simultaneously smart and fun, structured yet chaotic, sophisticated yet accessible. In the spirit of ReadyMade’s reuse ethos, the book itself is an object that is reusable by utilizing the spine as a ruler—inches on the front cover, centimeters on the back.

Since the book’s content swings wildly from do-it-yourself projects and scientific diagrams to lifestyle articles, historical timelines and random sidebar nuggets of information, we deliberately pushed ourselves out of the usual structural comfort zones of contemporary book design—limited typeface use, repetitive grid structure, white space—to see how much variety the piece could sustain and still be coherent.

The chipboard cover, the clever transformation of the yellow binding type into a measuring rule, and, to a lesser extent, the faux “ad-hoc” sticker slightly askew clearly signal the DIY subject of this book. The interior is clean and well organized, and benefits greatly from cunning illustrations and witty captions, stills, charts, timelines and editorializing lectures (“use sun screen!”). In all, a clean, tight, winning package.