An idea I have for my book is to do a 'book' that folds out. Technically its not a book, its more like a poster. It will be 4 seperate sections joined in the middle. Each section will consist of a series of folds. 2 of the sections i.e. Yellow and Green Will lie on top of the middle square and blue and red would lie below it, this would allow it to fold properly considering the size of the sections once they have been folded.
Each time you unfold one of the pages a new word from the word assocation game would be revealed. So in a sense you are playing it as you go along. The numbers and arrows on yellow section of the illustration depict the order in which you should unfold it - you would fold the other sections in the same order but only after you finish the first section... so it would be number 14...15...16...17 etc. - I might include arrows and numbers on the back of each fold to guide the user along.
I've done a small scale test of my idea to see if it could work on a larger scale. It was just between 4 people in the studio throwing words around. You'll be able to see from the chart how it flows. I think by looking at how it went I should be able to manage it on a larget scale.
These were created using the 'human brain cloud' - an interesting way to communicate word association through visuals.
I'm basing my game around the game of 'word assocation' if you want to find out how it works, visit:
Just type in the first word that comes into your head after you read the word thats on the screen and the website will generate a word thats associated with the one you put in. Sound confusing? Just give it a go... it will make sense!
Here are some examples of various ways that books are bound, and by 'books', I mean the conventional type... with a spine, leaves, normally words... you get the picture!
Perfect binding
Coil Binding
Plastic Comb Binding
Limp-Vell um
Whilst doing research I came across this. Very interesting, but kind of gross... but apparently not in their culture. Click at your own discretion!
This is an album with the long-winded title 'Who Speaks For Planet Earth?' cover by a band with an equally long-winded name, 'And Then There Were None'. I've never heard their music but stumbled across this image when browsing the blog of Invisible Creature, probably my favourite music packaging design company. Symbology and metaphor have had a lot of emphasis put on them throughout the course especially within our recent visual language lessons and I think that this image really captures the essence of what we have been learning well.
The idea behind the gold disc is to represent the gold disc that was sent into space on the Voyager 2 in 1977 containing files depicting life on earth, in case of the event that an alien might stumble upon it. This ties into the title very well, 'Who Speaks For Planet Earth?' - the disc does! It also looks like a music CD, which implies that the music itself explores that very idea. Lastly, I think its really achieved that old, 1970's-80s sci-fi movie feel with the vintage-looking illustration, which I think they did a pretty good job with.
Title and focus of my work in response to the brief:
The book does not currently have an official title as of yet due to the fact that I'm still developing my ideas but its revolving around frames so 'Book of 100 Frames' could be the 'work in progress' title. At the moment I'm focusing on picture frames and this will be the main focus in my book. I currently heading towards creating either a 'frame catalogue' or a photo album.
Specific areas of research that I intend to investigate and methods that I will use:
The information I gathered over Christmas was a set of photographs documenting frame-work ranging from picture frames to bicycle frames. From this, factual information available to me is: Location of shot, Material of frame, i.e. wood, plastic, metal etc., Colours, Size etc. Whichever idea I choose to go with I will definetly be needing to take a lot more photos, if I'm going to do a 'frame catalogue' I'll need to take a lot more pictures of frames for study, inspiration and probably editing in Photoshop. Another Idea I have is to create a Photo album for past and present students in Leeds to keep memories of their time here in which I'll take photos of instantly recognisable buildings (ie. Roger Stevens building) and I'll cut holes out of parts of the buildings forming a frame for pictures to go into, I want to be creative with the architecture kind of in a way that Jaap Vliegenhart was when he created his awesome Photoshop manipulations of cityscapes (viewable in the portfolio section of his website) but instead of adding to the image through manipulation I'll be subtracting from it.
For the catologue idea I'll need to gather information such as which types of materials are used for frames both conventional and obscure as well as diffirent variations and finishings i.e. diffirent coulorations that varnish gives wood. I'll look into the history of framing and how its changed, what was popular then and now, antiquity and modernist framwork. For the album idea I'll need to find out and make a list of which buildings are memorable among students that will make for visually interesting photographs which will probably be done through a questionnare, I'll need to study into what type of photography and effects which would work best in context with my idea and I'll also need to study the mechanics of photo albums i.e. how the photographs will be held in place within the album.
What I'll use to create my book:
Photography is a very important one, I'll need to create very proffesional, crisp and detailed images which will require me hiring out an SLR as I won't be able to acheive the quality I need on my "point-and-click". I might use black and white photography, I've been exploring it within my elective and have access to the dark rooms almost every evening to develop film. I'll more than likely use Photoshop to edit the photos to get them consistent with each other and make any alterations that are needed. Typography will play a role as I'll probably be adding extra information through text and its obviously needed for the title. I'f I'm going to create a photo-album I'm going to have to do a lot of research into the practical side of how they are made as I've never done anything like it before, and it will probably require a lot of research, how-to guides, trial and error and a lot of time!
Methods I'll use to evaluate the progress and success of my work
I think is important to each stage of devolopment whether it be the research or mock-ups of the final product. Evaluation of research and ideas will be done in notebooks/sketchbooks, browsing other peoples ideas and past-work, from speaking to people which is especially effective in group crits - this also counts for final pieces. At various stages of devolopment I can present my work to be tested, which will probably involved a mock-up of the final product and a questionnare with questions which ask for input on the strength and weaknesses of the work and what could be improved.
If somebody came up and asked me that question, I'd probably say something along the lines of 'A body of pages bound together at a spine with some sort of cover'- possibly not the most eloquent of descriptions so I'll consult the dictionary instead and see what it says:
"a written work or composition that has been published"
"physical objects consisting of a number of pages bound together"
"A collection of sheets of paper bound together to hinge at one edge, containing printed or written material, pictures, etc."
"a set of written, printed, or blank sheets bound together into a volume"
"a set of written sheets of skin or paper or tablets of wood or ivory"
Those are a few among many of the definitions given by various sources that I've come across, some are very specific about what they should contain i.e. paper, written work, pictures etc. whereas others are a lot more ambiguos, 'physical objects'? The last entry is interesting as it makes me think of ancient writings, i.e. 'books' of the bible - most, if not all were not written in traditional 'book' form, and instead were written on scrolls mainly on papyrus - yet we call them books.
My original idea was to create 100 videos consisting of 100 frames each. I researched a few methods that I was going to experiment with in order to achieve this such as stop-motion, image-morphing software, flash/hand-drawn animations etc. At the beginning of the Christmas holidays I began experimenting with these methods especially stop motion, but after a couple of days of this I soon realised what a drawn-out process it would be to produce 10 interesting videos, I could easily film 100 videos of cars going past and reduce it to 100 frames... but that would be pretty boring.
I did around 10 videos and then decided to focus on something else, but here are some examples of what I did achieve during that time:
Spongebob Stop Motion from Gareth Smith on Vimeo.
Death Cab Summer Skin Stop Motion from Gareth Smith on Vimeo.
To Be Or Not To Be from Gareth Smith on Vimeo.
I decided to instead focus on actual tangible frames, so I've taken 100 pictures of 100 frames, whether it be picture frames, bicycle frames or borders on signs. The work somehow has to translate to a book and I think that it would work a lot better visually, whereas it would probably not be as easy to translate a computer-based video to paper.