This paper examines two approaches I argue most successfully transformed the conventional book and in doing so, challenged Walter Benjamin’s paradigm for art in the “age of mechanical reproduction.” These includes the neo-primitivist approach, in which artists looked to a pre-Gutenberg era for inspiration, and the ferroconcrete approach which looked to redefine the artist’s relationship to typography. To illustrate my argument, I examine the works of two Russian Futurists, Aleksei Kruchenykh who typifies the primitivist approach, and Vasily Kamensky, who invented the ferroconcrete approach.