The Book
Boys II Men — A Book, a Voyage, a Labour of Love
“Boys II Men” is a coffee-table book that was conceived during the football (soccer) World Cup, 2022, inspired by the journeys that shaped the men who represented their countries in the marquee global tournament. Men, who once were, and perhaps always will be — boys.
In what started as an intensely personal and experimental endeavour to find myself, I found a voice and an experience that I wanted to share — a dialogue that I wanted to engage in with you. It is a voice that speaks not just to sports fans, artists, technologists, thinkers… but more universally, to us as humans.
Educated and inspired by the stories of the 32 footballers featured within, this book uses a prism of introspection and curiosity to examine the intersection of past & present, of art & technology, of imagination & facts, of sports & philosophy.
As fan-art, this book is an outright celebration of its champions. As the outpouring of a man staring down the second half of his life — it is an attempt to rediscover childhood, it is a message from a father to his daughter, and it is perhaps even a note to self. As the work-product of an Engineer turned Designer — it is an exercise in balancing the left and right sides of our brains (with a bit of satire and commentary on the unprecedented times we live in). As an artefact — it is a map of a journey, has a life of its own, and tells the story of its own existence.
National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
The book contains a series of 64 portraits that are accompanied by topical essays, rhymes, and musings — woven together to also tell the story of the book’s own creation. It also contains some thoughtful discourse (and comic illustrations) on generative AI and our role as conscious, responsible stakeholders in its future (along with explorations on pertinent questions about “the nature of art”).
The book was illustrated through digital painting on the software – Procreate, and the preparatory process included imagining the featured footballers as children using generative AI tools such as Midjourney and Dall-E.
The portraits were not GenAI, but did leverage such tools in the process.
Designed and laid out in Adobe InDesign, the book was printed using full-colour, HD lithography on an HP Indigo press (+1 “special” colour for the cover using traditional lithography on a Heidelberg press), on carefully chosen and responsibly sourced (FSC® Mix rated) Samwha Rendezvous paper.
It was a labour of love that has not only allowed me to fulfill a personal quest, but as a self-published endeavour, also served as a learning experience and an exercise in project management (including editorial workflows) and logistics.