Reading through a couple of the relevant chapters in 'Graphic Design: A User's Manual.' by Adrian Shaughnessy really gave me a clarified starting point for book design..
William Morris wrote in "The Ideal Book", a paper written in 1983, "The picture book is not, perhaps, absolutely necessary to man's life, but it gives us such endless pleasure, and it is so intimately connected with the other absolutely necessary art of imaginative literature.."
"If the design thrusts itself on our attention, it is probably wrong. There should be a harmony and rhythm in such matters, as the form matches content, images marry text, and text flows from one opening to the next with pleasing aesthetic logic."
"There's no sharper test for a designer than distilling the contents of an entire book into an incisive graphic statement"
"Not the covers of airport blockbusters, movie tie-ins, romantic fiction or celebrity biographies. These are all done to a formula, and deviation would result in lost sales.. Look at the intelligent books for intelligent readers: modern fiction, classic fiction, biography, travel, cooking, the arts and humanities. Book covers must attract the attention of browsers who are faced with thousands of assailed books."
Considering how the context of my publication has developed, and how I need to make specific decisions which reflect my chosen target audience and thus the books whole feel, I began looking more specifically into the 'the coffee-table book' and its role. As my publication is going to be based on my photographic images, supported by some historical and present information, I researched into photography books to gain inspiration and see how the content is actually presented in a publication.
A Coffee Table Book is..
an oversized, usually hard-covered book whose purpose is for display on a table intended for use in an area in which one entertains guests and from which it can serve to inspire conversation. Subject matter is predominantly non-fiction and pictorial (a photo-book). Pages consist mainly of photographs and illustrations, accompanied by captions and small blocks of text, as opposed to long prose. Since they are aimed at anyone who might pick up the book for a light read, the analysis inside is often more basic unless specified to a particular audience. For example, in my case travellers and designers.
Cosmetic Surgery by Stanley James Press
'We enjoy designing and making real things, physical things that you can hold in your hands. We mainly make paper things like books, interesting mail-outs and portfolios. We can letterpress things, we design complicated fold out and pop up things.'
Cosmic Surgery is set in a fictional, not too distant future where intelligent materials are about to transform the world of traditional cosmetic surgery. I had easy access to this coffee table book so thought I'd look at more experimental ways of luring the audience in and the style can be reflected somehow into my project.
To deform the subjects inside the publication, Stanley James Press (SJP) uses paper folding techniques that create pop up images that fold flat when the publication is closed. This interactive feature stimulates the audience which makes the cosmetic surgery concept more prominent. SJP have pushed the form and function of a publication which changes peoples perception on the content and publications.
Here is a video of SJP creating a hand made mock-up of the publication:
Creating a hardback book cover safely contains the information and the paper. I aim to explore book binding methods so that I can start producing mockups. A well produced hard back book is immediately desirable because they evoke quality which makes them nice to use. They are usually more expensive so they're aiming at a specific audience.
Desillusion Mag (as mentioned before) is one of my favourite hardback coffee table books. They are the French purveyors of all things surf, skate, and snow and the magazine keeps it's beautiful hardback coffee book format, being ad-free it is incredibly design driven enhancing negative space with minimal/experimental image layout and a consistent article grid which does include some variation with quotes and images.
The clean black covers provide a strong protector for the inner pages, but also leave a nice aesthetic with a single photo, sometimes text and then spine detailing. I would love to experiment with foiling on this style of cover just to really enhance the more classy and visually attractive coffee table book style.
There is a lot of text featured but this is because it is more of a magazine than a photobook. With my images I have narrowed it down to reflect the more photo focused page layouts to really get a feel for how I can be inspired by this magazine for my project.
The magazine uses varied stock colours throughout, also experimenting with white and red inks on black which appears very pleasing and unique. But unless I can find an external printing company that can print with white inks I will be forced to only experiment with lighter paper stocks to print on. I have tried to print a full bleed background colour before to enable white type but on the printers at the college it does not appear consistent or of high enough quality. Below is a nice publication example using black stock and white ink to its full effect, featuring monochrome images it keeps the whole page layout and colour balance concise and striking. Perhaps I would try to develop this further with a justified, eye-catching colour accenting a title or caption directing the attention to main points of the page.
I would consider looking into having feature stock colours within my editorial, as creams and light pinks, etc are very aesthetical and unique but would need to be justified.
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