Book of 100.

Right this is a back dated post, but one I have only just noticed was missing from my blog! Oops.
Basically, here we have photos of mock ups, the final resolution and a general and pretty brief explanation as to how i arrived at it.
Enjoy...


Mock up 1:
This was my first attempt at Japanese stab binding, which was reasonably straight forward, the main aim was to test out the woodwork facilities down stairs, which I have to say are really well equipped, thanks Rodger for helping me make this one!
The cover is made from a 3 ply oak veneer that I glued and pressed over night. I cut it to shape, including a simple fabric hinge on the front cover, and clamped the whole lot together ready for binding.
I then took the whole thing back down to woodwork, measured and drilled the holes, and then... I stuck the whole thing on the industrial sander to get a really clean finish on the edges ( since the pages were all hand cut it was really uneven!)


I kept it all clamped up, so the binding was really secure and accurate.
Take a look...








Mock up 2:
This mock up was an experimentation into the possibilities of the content...
100 trees was never going to be interesting unless I did something really stunning, this was going to come in the form of 100 cut out trees, getting smaller and smaller untill the shape became an acorn! over 100 pages the effect would be a really thick, hollow inprint of a trees lifespan. Anyway I was concerned about how long this would take to hand cut, so i saught other way in which to cut the pages.
I found the laser cutter.

(apologies for the orintation of theses photos, It's not that I can't get the to rotate, I just cant be bothered to find out why they won't)





Final Resolution:
Went horribly wrong.
Bad time management along with the laser cutter being unavalible when I needed it, meant I couldn't go ahead with the cut out pages idea, and with less than a week to go I was starting to doubt whether or not i'd be able to get the book completed!
After alot of confusion and upset over my first plan going wrong, i finally got it together and went ahead with an idea based on layering tracing paper. The tracing paper was printed greyscale with my orginal photos, most of them had been digitally manipulated though.
The idea would have worked okay if I had managed to get the book bound to a reasonable quality, which I feel I did not. The binding is awful, really loose, which is a huge shame consdiering the amount of time I spend on the cover. Anyway take a look for yourself. I'd give it a 6/10 at the most.

crappy crappy binding..

Anyway thats about it for the 100 book, see my evaulation for a more in depth look at how I felt this project went..

ciao x

Wooden Books

Just found a website that made me wow a little bit.

http://www.leijonstedt.com/

Some of the content is very questionable, this is more of a Fine Art project I suppose, but look at the books! How beautiful are they? It's all very helpful to me anyway since the plan is to have a wooden cover for my book, which obviously raises plenty of issues as far as binding is concerned. I'll maybe take some of the most relevant images down to Vernon Street this week, and have a word with the guys down there.

Concertina style

This one's by far my favourite, looks really rugged and worn. Bindings abit pants though.

This ones pretty cool too, I think it's full of sonnets, how very romantic.
It's nice to see the artist has made a good effort to reflect the content in the design of the book.
Something I have thought long and hard about already...

We had to produce a mock up of our books for last Monday. I decided the best way to tackle this was to use the photographs in place of any drawings or sketches as this allows me to experiment with layout before committing to a specific design. I took the photos I had taken over Christmas and began to crop them down as shown above, I made this decision after a group crit, as the overall feeling was that the photos become more interesting when forced to study a small area in more detail.
This decision also allowed me to arrange the squares, considering layout, categorisation and overall aesthetics with relative ease.

Book of 100: Statement of Intent

1. State the title and focus of your work in response to the brief.

The title of my work is 100 Trees, however I assume this will change as my investigation into the subject progresses. After a confused beginning to this brief I have decided to focus purely on the aesthetic value of trees and anything I feel is relevant to this area of my chosen subject.


2. Identify specific areas of research that you intend to investigate and methods that you will use.

The most obvious starting point for my research had to be get out there, take photos, collect leaves, twigs etc. Having done that, I feel the best way to take this forward is to experience other artists work to see how they interpret the aesthetic quality of trees etc.

Another point of research will include collecting thoughts, feelings, memories and other interesting pieces of information in the form of surveys and questionnaires. I feel this will give the book a much needed sense of meaning, as so far I have a book of pictures that don't seem to have a purpose.



3. Identify specific practical methods and technical processes that you intend to use in order to visually develop your ideas.

Everything and anything I can lay my hands on to start with. Paints, pens, prints, photography, ink work, pencil work, rubbings, textiles?
I will then begin to narrow down this list and refine the processes I use depending on how well they work or how relevant I think that process is to my subject.

As a follow up I will start to consider how these largely traditional processes can be digitalised.



4. What methods will you use to evaluate the progress and success of your work?

As with every module, I feel the best kind of evaluation is that given by the rest of the group. I like to keep up a good amount of discussion regarding work whilst at college, and I feel this is always the most effective way to take note of and evaluate my progression.
I will capitalise on this through the use of surveys and questionnaires and crits with the group. This will allow me to record what I find, and take action accordingly.

I will also keep an on going series of design sheets and sketch books as an outlet for my own evaluations.

100 trees.

Could I have picked something more boring? No I don't think so. See I like trees, they're good fun to draw as well, loads of freedom to do what you want.
Anyway, It might be nice to challenge myself a bit more. So my new task is going to be to find the most interesting things about trees, and exploit it for all its worth.

Having got that out the way, I'll now share with you some of the photos I collected. Fun fun!






There are 100 of these, honest.
I took them at a few different locations, and at different times of day so I'd have a few ways to categorise them since that seems to be a major part of this brief.

Anyway I took these photos home and I had this empty sketch book, and I thought how nice it would be to fill it up with line drawings of trees, and though individually the pictures might become a bit boring, or 'samey', I think it would be a really nice thing to have. I'd find it interesting anyway. But then I wondered if that would be enough to fulfill the brief? Just because I like it doesn't mean anyone else will.

I had a go at the line drawings anyway. It was a lot more time consuming than I'd first thought. I managed about 7 over the last few days of the holidays, I'll scan them in and get them posted asap!

Oh, I also collected 100 leaves. so that might come into this project somewhere too..


If any of you have suggestions, feel free to let me know, ta!

3 Things to Watch.

What is a book you say?

well...





Rainbow In Your Hand
a flipbook by Masashi Kawamura




ABC-3D, a clever, type based pop up book designed by Marion Bataille




and I thought I'd post this one just because.