OUGD404 - What is a book? Studio brief 2- Study task 1

We were put into groups and asked 4 questions to answer the broad question of what is a book? Firstly I looked at the dictionary definition of what a book is.

This definition basically said a book must have pages and bound in some way, this leaves a lot of room for interpretation and other people have differing opinions on whether a book needs to be bound or have multiple pages at all.

We came up with a lot of words we associated with books to try and figure out our own personal definition like...

• Binding
• pages
• information
• product
• cover
• stock
• images
• text

We came to a rough conclusion that we could define a book as ''A series of sequential information bound into a folded document''. It could also be defined more loosely as something that trades and gives information to people, this opens the definition to include things like leaflets and kindles which could be argued as not being books.

The next question was ''what is the purpose of a book?''

We came up with all different ideas such as...

• To persuade
• to inform
• to discourage 
• to entertain

But the overall answer was to pass on information and content in some way (stories, facts, memories etc. We discussed the idea that a book is more personal that just reading a webpage or poster as its something you can physically hold in your hands and because of this you're likely to take in more information.

The third question was ''how is a book constructed?''. We first thought about the physical aspects such as pagination, binding (staple bound, ring bound, perfect bound), glue, stock, folding. The second aspect would be from the author's view who would construct a book from words, paragraphs and chapters.

The last question was ''what are your two favourite books?''. 

My first favourite book is 'The very hungry caterpillar', the book reminds me of a very happy childhood and holds a lot of good memories for me. From a design perspective the book is also brilliant as it has cut out holes you can stick your fingers through which as a child anything interactive is very appealing. The illustrations are also timeless and the book is still very popular.

My second favourite book is a very old a very old Delia Smith cook book my grandma gave me as a child. The book is a huge hardback with yellowed pages covered in cake mix. Its full of memories and so old, it taught me everything I know about cooking and reminds me of her. 

I love well designed books but my favourites are so because of the nostalgia and memories they bring me.