Pushing the concept of what a book is to the limit!

Flip: Designed by Ben Stevenson
(5000 page, double sided flip book bound together by 2 steel rods hung in a steel welded frame)
Exploring how far you can push a flip book concept.


























Tiling books: Pete Sampson's 9 hand made books come in 3 different sizes and only make sense when they are all put together. I really like this idea of having multiple books, however unless you knew they had to go together, they could be quite confusing when separated.

































Your House: The cover was designed by Michael Heimann, but the main design concept was by Olafur Eliasson. This method of using a book as a journey for the reader is really effective and interactive. The laser cutting through 454 hand-bound leaves takes you through a tour of the author's own home in Copenhagen. This has made me want to be crafty myself and explore the idea of cutting into books.


























What A Load Of Rubbish: Designed by Vaughan Ward to help people become more interested in recycling. The interaction with this book is very clever as the reader has to tear a sheet off to read each page and it encourages you to recycle it not throw it away.


























The Bookmaker: Deb Rindl
This is a similar technique to how I was shown how to layout all the pages on one large sheet and fold down into a book. The card - folded box that contains the book works really well as a different form of cover.














This Platstation3 Software Press Pack deals with an intricate accordian-style folding method that really interests me, as my first attempt of a book was in a simple concertina style.



































Chalkboard Book: Designed by Erin Zamrzla




























LautSprecher - Gedichte von Ernst Jandl
(LoudSpeaker - Poems of Ernst Jandl)
This subject doesn't interest me, but the way the pages open up so you have to find the text has inspired me to testing the first 'window' method myself.

All the Clothes of a Woman: Danielle Aubert

This method of presenting all her photographs reminded me of the way I had shown all my original 100 shell photographs. It is a very structured, catalogue style and I really like this clinical approach.
Each image showed an article of clothing, paired up with text about its status within her wardrobe. I like how personal the idea is and how it shows you could catalogue and categorise absolutely anything.

Rainbow Record Book and Recycle Bin Book - Ecopak (both by Erin Zamrzla) are more examples of the materials you could use. The possibilities are endless!














This Egg Carton Book is my favourite, with 144 pages cut from paper grocery bags. I really want to explore the idea of my shell theme in this way... with a large double sided shell to open up and act as the book cover.

So far so good...

After my group tutorial today I feel like I can really go somewhere with this brief and enjoy it. I've moved away from the concertina idea and instead of everything being so lineal and simple, I want to hold the readers interest by perhaps breaking down the information into categories/ chapters. I learned today that just because it's a book of 100, it doesn't mean to say there must be 100 of everything. For example I could look into my shell statistics and original ways I categorised them and have:

5 books of shell families with 20 images per book inside
10 books with 10 interesting facts per book
1 huge book with 99 other tiny books inside - each with a fact file about each shell I photographed
1 book with each page alternating between fact and image (50 of each)
25 books, each with 4 facts (100 words per book)

My favourite ideas are the ones that involve interaction, so I want to explore the 1 big book (with either perfect binding, or perhaps opens up to be a poster style page) with 99 mini fact-file books inside or on it. I also want to look at the different book-per-shell-family idea, where the facts and statistics are pulled out of the shell or pop open within the book. I want my statistics to be laid out in a very clinical, organised way, as it's the way the book is made that I want to be exciting.

Hopefully I haven't given myself too much work for the amount of time we have left, but I shall soon find out what proves to be successful, unsuccessful or just damn right impossible!...

Sam Winston

This work has really inspired me and motivated me to think about the importance of crafting and interaction with the audience. I want to explore and move away from the perfect bound obvious book form and think about how I can display my information in an interesting way - for now the content of the book can wait!































The work below made me think about possibilities of how I could include type in my ideas and if this is a road I decide to go down I could find interesting facts to fill shell shapes or even design type that is made out of a collage of shells... Something else to explore maybe?...

Completed book - Height of 100 shells.

First page showing the tallest shells...












































...Right down to the smallest shell on the last page at 3mm!

Mini brief within 'Book of 100' Brief!

After a lot of going back and forth over ideas, I have decided to go with the idea of designing my book based on the statistics of the height of each shell. I have the challenge of including the idea of '100' in a 32 page book, so I will have 3 or 4 photographs per page so they all fit in. The height will gradually decrease as you continue to flick through the book.

Here are my mini mock-up ideas.


























First idea of the images running down the page, portrait and landscape, but the gradual decrease in size doesn't flow very well when you have to keep turning the page and breaking the pattern. I then started to explore the concertina book and decided to go with that idea.

Book of 100... - Statement of Intent.

State the title & focus of your work.

I have chosen to create a book of 100 shells, focusing my work on keeping the reader (audience) interested enough about the subject to want to look at every page.

Identify specific areas of research and methods that you will use.

I have already looked into the obvious kinds of research - primary being my 100 photographs and documenting them in various categories, e.g. size order (height, width, depth in graphs), colour, type of shell and texture. I looked at secondary research in the form of close-up shell photography and facts & statistics about them, but I will definitely need to research further. I hope to find more information that has the potential to be visually exciting, whether that be image or text based I do not know yet. I also want to keep researching what a book actually is and stretching the boundaries of what it could be.

Identify specific practical methods and technical processes.

I really want to stick with the main practical methods being image based, involving drawing and/or photography. After developing a few more technical skills I could even take these into Photoshop/ Illustrator if appropriate to my ideas. I particularly want to focus a large amount of my time on crafting and forming many possibilities of how my book could look, creating ideas that will make people interact with it. I am unsure if my subject can be moved away from imagery and become typographic, unless I can find interesting facts, but that is something I might think about.

Methods of evaluation.

I intend to regularly evaluate throughout this brief, in my sketchbook or here on my blog, based on crit feedback and my own thoughts and investigations. I will then have a written conclusion as to whether the final resolution(s) has been successful or not.

100...shells!

Obviously there aren't 100 individual photographs on here, but there's a few close-ups and the rest can be seen on the sheet I displayed them on.











































































I then categorised them in many different ways...

*Photos to come

What is a book? (2)

The World's Smallest Newspaper in the Guinness Book of World Records!!














This one of the smallest known books, a copy of 'The Lord's Prayer', measuring 5x5mm.












A 26-page, leather bound book, which is even smaller!! It's 2.4mm by 2.9mm with a letter of the alphabet on each page. Wow!


















A 150 page book, measuring 150cm x 180cm to raise awareness! A Kuwaiti dental technician broke the World Record with this book about the importance of mouth hygiene. Why it needs to be this big is beyond me!!