OUGD404 What is a book? & folding

We were all asked to bring in 3 books and discuss them with our table.

This is the first example we looked at, its called a hotdog book. Its really cheap and easy to produce as its made up of just one piece of paper and folded and cut to create the layout.

In this photo above you can see the central cut and how the book is paginated for future reference incase I wish to create a book this way. I would say this is a book as it has a series of pages and is bound with folds.

This next example was just of a notebook, id say this is the kind of book that the content is your own to create. Although its not informational you create the information. This example is ring bound which is a technique usually used for formal books. 

This next example was from Wallpaper city guide. These books are perfect bound, I think this binding gives off a professional and high quality look. The book was mostly printed on a thick matte stock, I think this once again gives off a high quality look as theres no glare on the type so its highly legible and attractive. The photo pages though are on gloss paper, I think varying paper type throughout a book is really interesting and would take a lot of careful design work when it comes to pagination. This careful consideration is really appealing. But my favourite part was the little tabs in the book for easy navigation, this is something id love to try in my own design work.

This example above shows a staple bound book. I decided to look at different binding types for future inspiration when creating my own book. 

Above is another example of what I would consider a book. It told a story and was staple bound. I didn't like this book as it was printed on semi gloss paper and had no images, it resembled a hospital information book which I would associate with negative feelings of illness and wouldn't want to pick up for these reasons.

I next looked at two examples of the magazine printed pages. The first was the older version which was on quite thin stock and staple bound for cheap production. They then changed this recently to a perfect bound magazine with a thicker cover, making these small changes gives the magazine a much higher class look and they can charge more. You can see the staple bound one has cracked ink on the spine so overall the newer design is more durable and attractive.

Cameron for his example of a book brought in a map where you scratch off the parts of the world you have visited. He said he considered this to be a book as it was like creating your own story as you travelled around. I personally wouldn't consider this a book as its just one page with no kind of binding. This is a perfect example of how peoples personal definitions differ.

Above is an example of a case bound book. I love this kind of binding as I would associate it with more expensive books that were stories or informational rather than magazines. I think using this binding instantly adds a certain element of class to your book.

This next book is a handmade photo album. The construction of the book includes folds and glue and creates a birds eye view of a star, this is really beautiful and personal way of creating a book.

Charlotte brought in a Kindle as her example of a book. I wouldn't consider this as a book as although it physical its not printed or bound which I think are key elements to defining a book as a pose to a piece of digital technology.

This example shows a boom bound by string, I like this kind of binding as it looks quite homemade. I think this binding would seem really personal to whoever owned and appeal to artistic people a lot. I like the idea of the binding and the spine being exposed as it looks almost imperfect and interesting in contrast to other methods.

Our next task was to create a book using only folds. I decided to challenge myself and rather than using the standard 2-3 format I wanted to create a triangle format book.

I used 3 pieces of square paper and folded them exactly the same then slotted each triangle into each other.

Each colour of paper folded out into a different direction which was really interesting to me, it was partly a book and party a piece of interesting origami. If I was to try and design a printed book using this layout I can imagine it would be incredible challenging but If it worked it would be amazing to read and handle as a physical book.

As a group we reproduced this design but larger, it was really interesting, I can definitely say if I saw a book printed like this in a shop id have to buy it just because of the interesting binding techniques. It would just be a challenge to design.