Typeface in context - Research

The concept is more or less defined, but I am having troubles identifying what kind of books or production I should follow. During the session of the 11th, Simon went through all the checkpoints to make sure everyone is up to date. That was very helpful and helped to identify what I needed to polish or have a decision about at this point in time.

For my last idea for the publication, I kind of had the target audience identified. This publication would be for people with critical way of thinking, which in most part are young. But I had other things equally important that needed to be identified in order to progress, like the stock and binding. After having a helpful chat with Simon about how can I make the production informed by the content, I've had some conclusions that would help me identifying the details for my production.

- The production stems from the target audience.

- To show images, it needs to look materially attractive. People should want to hold it and take it home.

- I was thinking about making a boring and flat cover. In a shop full of design books, maybe that would be a way to stand out... or maybe not. Either way, something needs to be there in order to make the product desirable. If it's not the cover, it needs to be something else (the material of the cover, emboss, foiling, etc).

- The book is going to be quite thin, but it needs to be attractive. For this, I've thought of using different stock throughout the book.

At this point I start my research, visiting websites like uniteditions.com, pinterest and going to the library to find useful content. I wanted to find something along the lines of my concept, but that can be a very time consuming task to do, and it might not worth the time. Also, looking for books that get in detail about binding methods, stock use and other stuff, I found out that all of them were already borrowed. So instead of focusing on the content for inspiration, I think it is better if I focus on publications that look similar to my potential book in physical terms. I already know more or less how the content is going to be displayed, showing full bleed images (so it is going to be printed in a generous size) and it's going to be thin. So after checking many different books in the library, I borrowed 5 different books that more or less fit in these parameters and aim to similar purpose:

The forever Loop - Eddie Peake: A thin book with a hard cover. Very interesting combination I haven't seen before. The problem is that it doesn't stay flat, which is not very good for a good showing images. Alternative use of cover having the name of the book in the back of it and the artist on the front cover.




Crossfire - Christian Marclay: Very interesting squared aspect ratio and perfect binding combining two different sizes for a book that mainly shows images. Clean cover with the name of the artist with more importance than the title of the book, which makes me think this is more a portfolio.



When I think about sex... - Tracey Emin: Very succint and simple cover, probably done it that way so the word sex can stand out. The stock in this book has nothing special about it, and that's probably what makes it special. It feels handmade, similar to a newspaper stock, but thicker. It's not pure white, more like ivory white. Probably good to convey a feeling of dullness in my publication. The book is put together using staple binding and it lays quite flat for this amount of pages.




Lothar Hempel - Propaganda: With a similar square aspect ratio than Crossfire, but bigger, which makes pages weight more and lay flatter with its perfect biding.




Kienholz - The Ozymandias Parade: A big and thin book (42.5x27.5). The aspect ratio is a bit too narrow for my taste, as it looks like a restaurant menu or some kind of catalogue you are given to in hotels. In this book is even more obvious the use of thicker stock, which makes the pages even heavier. This is the way it needs to be in order to keep the publication strong enough, far from flimsy.






A combination of Kienholz and When I think about sex... could make my publication interesting with a good size look at the pictures in detail. Some pictures will be cropped, which it means that I won't be able to do a full bleed with all of them. These books also have helped me in how to present more than one picture per page.

In order to add more attractiveness to the book, maybe it would be a good idea to add an interesting looking book binding method instead of stapling, which is something I've already done in first year and it shouldn't increase the cost too much.