Guide for the Unlucky: A Pop-Up Book

A charming, beautifully designed inventory of the world’s best-known superstitions—with good advice on how to avoid bad luck. Misfortune, unfortunate occurrences, unfavorable outcomes, bad luck: whatever you call it, almost everyone has cursed it at some point. Edward Gorey-esque in design and drawing from common folklore, Guide for the Unlucky is a charming interactive book that outlines the origin of the best-known unlucky charms—a broken mirror, a black cat crossing in front of you, an incorrectly buttoned shirt, cracks in the sidewalk, an inverted horseshoe—and how to avoid incurring misfortune from them. For example, viewing a new moon through a pane of glass or over your left shoulder was considered to be unlucky as early as 1830, and the remedies to reverse this luck included "turning all the silver in your pockets." Designer Kyle Bean’s unique pop-engineering and sensitivity to design presents the material with a fresh perspective. Equal parts wry, informative, and visually appealing, Guide for the Unlucky is a wonderfully artful gift for the person who could use a little help with their luck.

Kyle Bean is an illustrator and designer who lives in Sussex, England.