OUGD404: Studio Brief 02 - What Is A Book? - Rough Ideas/Notes

Studio Brief 2 for Design Principles:

"A publication is essentially pieces of paper stuck together."

"It could be held together with a rubber band."

"Some are disruptive but engaging."

"Use different stocks."

"Play around with content."

"Don't make a book about tigers."

My second publication is going to be photography based - to show the use of negative space. This idea is originally inspired by publications such as Cereal or Kinfolk. I personally really like the aesthetic of their publications because they use negative space in a minimalistic way to where it looks sophisticated and elegant rather then just really basic. Their layout style is very pristine.

 

Cereal

Kinfolk 

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Ideas:
Aesthetic Landscapes / Sunsets. I really like the colours within sunsets; the gradients are really aesthetic. I feel like the vibrancy of the sunsets or landscapes would contrast nicely with the negative space.

A book similar to museum of broken relationships but instead of just items/places - maybe too personal.

A book filled with opinions or anecdotes - Filled with images of people, objects or places that mean something to someone and then a paragraph of information as to why. It can be vague or very specific.

Coffee Shops in Leeds - like instagram but in book form.

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Use little inserts and maybe various stock for the image caption/information. So that there is a slip between every few pages to explain what the image is instead of having text surrounding the actual image.

Either based on landscapes or 'places/things that are meaningful to me and why.' Similar to Museum of Broken Relationships - A Diary. The concept behind the Museum of Broken Relationships is that the museum displays objects from past relationships that were meaningful to that person.

I couldn't find any inserts of their book online so the closest thing I could find was their tumblr (brokenships.tumblr.com) which features a few objects and descriptions:

The aesthetic of the museum, book and online presence is very consistent. It maintains a pristine and clean, 'pinterest' style where the background is entirely white and the object is the main focus. Similar to what Cereal does. It is a concise use of white space. The devision between the text and object is clear. Volume 2 - The Diary looks like an actual diary. It is clean and flat. Whereas the Volume 1 looks like an image heavy, graphics book because of the design - the image on the front with the text overlaying and the wording on the spine whereas Volume 2 looks like it could be a blank notebook.

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I thought about objects for this but then realised it would probably be too personal. I then decided to deviate slightly from the original idea and adapt it to the idea that I would photograph objects that have various meanings to people whether they're happy or sad. Just anything that contains a memory to that specific person. It could be an object or a place but it must contain a meaning to them because everyone has those things or places that whenever they look at it it brings them back to a time or place in their life. It will be a reflection similar to a diary in a very simplistic format. The layout will include a lot of white space similar to Cereal and Kinfolk.  

The contents page could include:

• Relatives
• Friendships
• Relationships
• Objects/Miscellaneous
• Places

I could get people to let me photograph something that means something to them on a separate slip. It would be written as a quote with their initials or anonymous at the bottom.

"A key from home before leaving for university."

-S.S.

I could include an epigraph on the front page explaining the project is about (that it is a collective of objects that hold a memory for someone) then I would need to find people willing to let me photograph objects.