What’s hiding inside London homes? Yooree Ko and Owl & Dog Playbooks map a neighbourhood of collectors

The Grammy-nominated Owl & Dog Playbooks is a London-based children’s book publisher made up of Yeonju Yang and Claudio Ripol – designers who, while running their studio YA-RD, started publishing playful books aimed at children as a way to explore ideas and creative collaboration free from client briefs. One of the fruits of their decade-long labour is the new playbook Collector’s Street, created in collaboration with South Korean illustrator Yooree Ko, who specialises in print, zines and silly trinkets. The dream trio conceptualised a picture book about a unique community where every character has an eccentric collection, representing the rich inner worlds of the average home and its secret collectors. Utilising the book format perfectly, each page unfolds to reveal an X-ray of multi-layered houses and apartments filled with oddities, much like a Where’s Wally or an iSpy book.

“We often start our books from a format; in this case, the fold-out flaps came from one of our son’s old doodles. From there, we thought the format lent itself to the action of peeking inside a house to reveal hidden lives within, and we created the stories of each character based on a different obsession,” says Claudio. “I have always been drawn to the idea of a ‘map’. I love how a single space can hold an indeterminate number of stories at once – how every corner can reveal something different, and how each small element can exist on its own while still being connected to a larger world that the reader constructs themselves,” says Yooree. Fascinated by places that seem chaotic at first but slowly reveal their own rhythm and sense of order, the illustrator drew Collector’s Street using Procreate and Photoshop in the style of a handmade collage, illustrating each room separately then composing them digitally, assembling the houses room by room. In a way, Yooree becomes a miniature homemaker through this book.

The love inside this book comes from the Owl & Dog Playbooks creator’s interests in collecting – Yeonju has a collection of mid-century toys and Claudio collects Ledney Matchbox die-cast cars. It’s human nature to collect stuff and this book is a celebration of maximalism and the act of possession. For Yooree, a home isn’t simply a building, but a manifestation of desires and fantasies, a space where one can slowly fill every corner with their own favourite things, proof of one’s personhood, interests and dreams. “It might sound a little strange, but I enjoy looking at the houses as I walk past and imagining the lives unfolding behind the windows,” admits Yooree. “Although I have been living in the UK for almost 10 years, British houses still feel like a mysterious world from a storybook to me. It really stimulates my imagination. Perhaps that is why those quiet walks bring out so much inspiration in me. It feels as though all the images, memories and fragments of beauty I have collected inside myself suddenly begin to pour out – from the dreamlike atmosphere of Spirited Away by Studio Ghibli to the worlds captured in Bruegel’s paintings.”

As you can see, within these brutalist structures and cosy family lifestyles, intimate cross-sections of artist studios, living rooms, theatres and post offices are expanded with a deeply textural and colourful style. “We are fascinated by architecture. Having recently published a book about Richard Rogers, we were keen to keep inspiring children to explore the world through the lens of the built environment,” says Yeonju. Yooree points readers to the second-hand bookshop in Brixton called Book Mongers, which is filled with “that wonderful old-book smell”. What intrigued the artist was the closed-off area at the back of the shop, a place that seemed to be accessible only to the owner. “I’ve always wondered what might be hidden behind that door. Secret books? Or a secret room? That kind of mystery always sparks my imagination. Maybe that hidden space could become the inspiration for my next book (spoiler!).”