Tiny Stories: Volume 2

 You all know Joseph Gordon-Levitt, right? Pretty face who plays beside Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer? Played Robert Todd Lincoln in the currently-box-office-hot Lincoln? Rumored to be playing Batman in a new comic-inspired movie? Yeah that guy.

Well, turns out he’s also the pretty face behind the online collaboration production company, HitRecord, that allows artists to post, compile, collaborate, and remix to create even better art, film, writing, and other projects. They travel, they publish, they produce CDs, sharing the collaborative art (and then sharing the profits with the collaborators). Pretty cool, right? 

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories Volume 1 debuted last year, filled with small stories and art created by HitRecord collaborators. They’re quirky. They’re different. Some of them are a little bit strange, a little bit funny, a little bit sentimental. Some of them make you cringe, make you wonder, make your heart swell, or make you shake your head and giggle a little.

Volume 2 is hot off the presses from It Books, an imprint of Harper Collins. It makes a wonderful stocking stuffer for a friend. Tuck a little bookmark or Starbucks gift card inside, wrap it in craft paper, tie it up with some twine, maybe add some washi tape. They’ll think you’re super cool. (which is true)

Here are a few of my favorites:

See artists worked together on the story and illustration. They hit record, they remixed it, they turned it into something unique. I adore this one.

Truth be told: These two volumes are lovely. They are a pleasant reminder of the tactile beauty of the printed book, with their textured, imprinted book jackets and their quirky, artsy vibe. 

And I love that, being a quirky, artsy story-teller myself.

YOU can join, too! I scoped out the collaborative scene, and I think I just might jump in myself and contribute some writing to be remixed. Let’s fill some pages for Volume 3, yeah?

I have always identified with the quotation, “The universe is not made of atoms; it is made of stories.” ~Muriel Rukeyser

HitRecord adds one important word to that: tiny. 

“The universe is not made of atoms; it is made of tiny stories.” ~Muriel Rukeyser and wirrow