The Brief:

The 16 pages

Here is a refresher on the 16 pages I created! I decided to keep all of the pages the same from the original exercises.

The only thing that I would change from the previous exercise would be the ability to be able to print them out using the colour laser printer. As I explained in my previous post, sadly I have been at home now for 3 weeks really ill and haven’t had access to the normal lovely laser printer at work that I like to use for all my exercises and assignments! 😦 I have been dedicated to using my home inkjet printer which just does not give as good print quality! The images with a laser printer would appear bold and glossy and vibrant whereas a home inkjet printer they appear dull and matte. Despite this though I still had to move forwards and take what I had and use what I could to create a new book for my 16 images. I printed 16 more pages off using A4 white copy paper.

My images are small measuring just 10x10cms each and ideally I wanted to keep them this small 1) because I liked the idea of the being in a cute little flip narrative book and 2) because home inks are a nightmare and easily run out before you know it! Sadly, I needed to keep costs down! Going back to my previous “Concrete poetry” exercise where I had to design for the poem and then print it out, I decided to print it out on leafy wallpaper (that I stole from B&Q!) because 1) it represented the “resting on laurels” with the Bay Laurel leaves and 2) it took the poem back to its original roots where it was printed onto cheap wallpaper to keep costs down! I still liked this idea and let me tell hya!… I needed to keep my costs down so I decided to get my Fiancé to kindly “borrow” some more of the leafy loveliness that was the wallpaper in B&Q whilst I stayed at home dying so that I could then use this to back each of the 16 pages and make into my little narrative flipbook!

Once I had acquired the wallpaper I went about cutting 16 10x10cm squares and then using spray mount I stuck one image to the back of each square of wallpaper. At the end I had quite a chunky little book! I organized the pages in order that they appear in the poem.

If I was to go about this process again, had I had more time and better printing facilities, I would have created A4 documents in InDesign and arranged my 16 images over a few pages and then cut some A4 sized wallpaper to feed into the printer and print my designs directly onto them. The sad, harsh reality also though is that I have had to cut corners on my exercises as I am massively out of time in my course!

I originally wanted to create an open spine book. I really like the look of my David Carson book that is open spine and fancied having a go at one myself. The only medium I had though to try and replicate this was a glue gun!- In typical fashion, my glue gun decided to not work mid flow! (I found myself having to force the end of a paintbrush in the end of the gun to squeeze the glue out as the glue decided to get stuck and melt all inside the gun!!) Despite this I created a gluey, open spine but it looked messy and I just didn’t like it! I then went on to Plan B and using some greyboard, created a front and back cover and spine for my book. On the inside covers I used the leafy wallpaper and on the front I printed out a section of my design for the original poem I did in “Concrete poetry”.

I did contemplate using my sewing machine to bind the spine together but the pages would have been too thick for a domestic machine. I also think that if I had hand sewn the pages that it would not have been strong enough to keep the pages all bound together.

What I ended up with wasn’t the most professional job! I mean it worked and it looked ok as a tiny narrative flipbook but again with more time, money and resources it could have been professionally printed to a higher quality. I do like the texture that the wallpaper gives the book though – and in keeping with the original nature of the book being printed on the cheap, this DIY handmade book is in keeping! From looking back to artists books from Part 1 of this unit though, I did see a little book that is quite similar to my own in the fact that it is handmade and there is something quite unique and charming about this one! It reminds me that not all books need to be professional in their appearance and they can be more like zines and artists books.