This book is part of a tetralogy of books written by Jackson for Laurence King Publishing, the others being: Folding Techniques for Designers, Structural Packaging and Cut and Fold Techniques for Promotional Materials.

As you would expect, it follows the same visual style of the others, being an 8.5″ square, devoid of any colour, with 130 pages of content. Having taught folding technology in universities around the world, few other people could bring such a wealth of experience and expertise to the subject.

The key to the books target audience is in the title – “techniques”. This is not a book showing finished pop-up models, whether in the Victorian theatre style or the contemporary work of Reinhart or Pienkowski, but a compendium of techniques that can be combined and adapted to almost any purpose. The techniques involve almost exclusively straight-line cuts and folds, favouring “surface design over complex cutting”, as the publishers explain. No glue is needed! This does limit the subject to what you might call “natural” pop-ups, so there is nothing on multiple layers, floating layers, pull-up planes etc. so cleverly used in modern children’s books.

However, this is not the target market. The book is aimed fair and square at marketing and packaging students and professionals, for whom it will undoubtedly form “required reading”, along with the others in the series. Together, they form a resource that is (to the best of my knowledge) unrivaled in the world of print.

Available for the unusual price of £11.16 on Amazon, it’s not a book for origamists, but it was never intended to be and outside the world of origami, Jackson is far better known as a paper artist rather than a creator of representational models. If you have any interest in folding technology, you should buy them all and there are special offers if you wish to do so.

More information can be found on the publishers’ site, including a link to a series of videos.