Line

having not looked intently at this brief i decided to look at someting a bit different to start with. many others within the group had moved at documented all sorts of lines but i've had difficulties starting this project as i want to make something interesting. plus i have had very little time on my hands with the deadline for the module looming over my head. ok so not quite a line but the intention of a line is there so in a sense this could be considered a line. dot to dots are the quintessential, drawing, challenge, past-times of many children (and some adults) today. i thought its quite interesting how you already know what the image is even theough its just a series of dots. i think its quite possible that your mind automatically joins the dots in your head either consciously or subconsciously so you can see what the images is without even thinking it.




















i would really like to take this forward but the crit that recieved for the work that i was looking at told me that this was a way of producing line however it lacked subject matter. i havn't chosen something to document a line of which at this point is something i majorly lack. what lines could i document? i started thinking about maps and the dots on a map that maybe make up lines. chloe galea documented the places that she has been to in the book of 100 and that comprised of flags dotting the places she has been to throughout the world. i thought that was really nive and i liked the idea of documenting the movement of myself. hannah jackson documented movement in her bok of 100 which was a really interesting idea and will asken documented the same but categorised more formally in the form of data cars which could be interpreted through a cypher. all very good ideas of documenting places and movement but i don't want to make something that has been produced before. i do like the idea of dot to dot but where could i take it. something that needs a bit of thought and some inspiration. i thought his one was interesting by joining up the dots in a different manner as followed below a different image can be achieved. try it.

Start at: 5
Draw to: 53, 52, 51
Move to: 19
Draw to: 18, 11
Move to: 57
Draw to: 58, 68
Move to: 3
Draw to: 52
Move to: 8
Draw to: 4
Move to: 87
Draw to: 89
Move to: 53
Draw to: 55, 56, 57, 13, 11, 10, 9, 8, 24, 21, 19, 44, 42, 41, 21
Move to: 2
Draw to: 4, 6, 7, 5, 3, 1, 2, 26, 31, 34, 33, 36, 37, 32, 29, 30, 48, 51, 81, 74, 72, 71, 106, 105, 104, 103, 101, 97, 90, 89, 65, 59, 66, 88, 87, 79, 68, 66, 67
Move to: 81
Draw to: 78, 108, 107, 86, 90

Skin

i started thinking about the cover of book that i want produce and started looking into the skins of book and came across a few things.  A 17th century book believed to be bound in the skin of a priest executed for treason. how very disgusting you might think but it gets better. the book appears appears to bear a "spooky" image of the priest's face  on the cover.
the book was featured in the metro and apparently was  or is to be sold at auction. Sid Wilkinson, from Wilkinson's Auctioneers in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, who will or has sold the book, said he could see the Jesuit priest's face peering out from the cover. very nice indeed. 

on the subject then of skins i decided to look at altering the skin on my book and started thinking about making a duster book so that the outside of the book could be used as a duster to clean surfaces etc. i think that could be really interesting but may clash with the simplistic, clean and clinical look which i have decided on as it clashes with the dirt. i don't want to create a dirty looking book, its not really what would interest me and necessarily beautifies the dust that i am working with. i've started to printout the A5 fixed format book by the way and it looks really nice. i'm just a few alignment problems with it but i'm positive the outcome will look fantastic.

Notebook

this week i hopefully will be investing in a macbook :) i just dipped into my savings and i'm gonna buy it this weekend aaaaaaaaarh! scary times... its going to be a macbook pro i think but i just don't know whether i need the apple care , i mean would it actually be worth it? i've been having a major dilemma, i mean apple must have surely somewhat perfected the design of the apple macbook now. but apple products are designed to have a shelf life aren't they? so once your product breaks you have to buy another one to give apple more money. and to make things a tad worse a couple people on this damn course get theirs for free that kinda take the biscuit i'd have to work 4 months to afford the one that i want. there is some unfairness in the world. :( anyways on the theme of book i decided to cross them together in a search and found this. its quite cool. completely useless unless it actually works like a laptop and the c.d. contains the book. i think the idea is really interesting how a laptop could tell the story to you and you wouldn't actually have to read it and has the idea of how a laptop can be referred to as a note'book' or a mac'book', i wonder if you could have a laptop skin like this? hmm an idea of future books... 

OMFG CMYK

i was looking through some blogs and things and i came across this absolute beauty! the cmyk pen for graphic designers. imagine it in your fingertips the power you have, it just looks so damn good its one of those pens that you would hang out of your shirt pocket with pride and be like, "Yeah its the cmyk pen. oh! wheres yours? don't you have one? never mind... you stick to that trusty 'bic' (cough)." you do want to just caress it, don't you?unfortunately its not real! nooooo! but the idea and the simplicity makes this pen functional and the simple styling is so elegant.

Sit Back & Enjoy a Good Book

do say more? by GRUPPO DAM (1970)
"Libro" ("Book") Chair

On Book

well so far it has taken me donkeys to produce the single A5 fixed format book and it doesn't seem to be getting any easier. The next book i am to produce is the same again but without fixed format. in both of the crits we have had jo's two book sessions and the brief blog tutorial i have seen many different book designs but not all of them are practical and readable as i have noticed. making a book the no one can read is pointless, it kind of defeats the object of book and becomes more of an art piece instead. so cutting out pieces of an existing book and making a topographical dissection in between the pages is, i'm sorry, not quite a book. 

on the subject of research however i decided again to look at some variations of swatch guides, similar to the pantone guides that i had looked at before. many searches led to the same thing or variations i did however come across one. this is a colour guide to NYC by Julie Cloutier. quite beautiful and a design that would like mine to come out like. The guide comprises of colours swatted from images that were take from New York. a very6 simple idea and different aswell i think i could probably do something along those lines, maybe swatting colours from my dust swabs and seeing the variations in colour that i get. could be quite interesting. i've added a couple of other swatch guides aswell. i thought this guide, not quite a book, more of a mug was really interesting. designed and sold by Suck UK it helps you how to make the perfect cup of tea using the colours as a guide to how much milk you should put in or how brewed you like you tea. i also found a small design on a leaflet advertisement for Tetley Tea using the same idea, showing the colours of various cups of tea with your personality tea type. very funny! oh and on the idea of this i found an interesting client colour guide at changeorder.com which was also quite funny. i've had ideas about naming the types of dust that i get since we made the first book. names such as, 'Mouse's back', 'Pigeon' and so on could be quite entertaining and give an extra dimension to the design rather than being so formal. i'll have to experiment in the mean time, whilst getting my first book printed and all the other go damn work that must be finished.

Story-telling

the art of instructional design. pointing someone in the right direction has been this weeks visual language sesh. using icons we were to narrate a series of events within 6-7 images i really enjoyed this little brief it was a lot harder than it sounds, i ended up trying to narrate a headshot scene in COD5 it didn't quite pan out... i'm not the best of illustrators. anyways on the idea of icons i started looking at books in the library on instructional design and i found a couple, i like this one 'Pictograms Icons & Signs' i found it quite good to look at, it contained all the basic signage we see in the modern work today such as computer icons and road signage aswell as a few others. i like the ones that we produced in black and white and i do want to finish them i like these ones that i found and i think i might vectorize them on the computer. i think that next week we will be looking at producing the same type of images again so in the mean time i will start my research into a series of event of something that i can use.

This is Not a Book

... it is a straight edge, a picture frame, a ruler, a paper weight, a book end, a fly swatter....

ready made is a book i purchased from our local yorkshire sculpture park. yay! love yorkshire! the book ready made is sort of an eco book is gives information about how you can better yourself and the environment, providing things you can do at home by re-using things you might normally throw away. i really like the layout in this book everything  is laid out so cleanly it kind of reflects my own work, the type is also pretty gorgeous aswell as the imagery and mostly everthing else... 

i used this for my inspiration in the mail shot brief for layout ideas and such. what else has

 really interested me is the way they describe the book. 'this is not a book, it is a straight edge, a picture frame, a paper weight, a book end, a fly swatter...' if you think of all the different ways you use book not for just reading you can think of many different things. the way a book is made has lasted years quite simply since the dawn of the bible or even before, so why do i need to create a different design the one that is see,ingly perfect as it is? something to think about.

Gather

after the first week of finding out information about everyones favorite subject (dust of course) i felt it relevant to make and update of the information that i have been looking at over the past couple of weeks. initial information that i found was form a generic search on google where i came across wikipedia information which gave me lots of generic facts and from there i began looking dust mites and i even found some artists work based on drawing using dust which was quite interesting. but one of the most interesting pieces of information that i gathered was the 100 swatches that i took from around the room 130 at that college itself where we normally work everyday. i mapped out the entire room taking dust swatches at random, each location of each dust swatch in various colours , according to their height within the room. pink being on floor level to 1m, green 1m to 2m and blue for 2m and above. overall the effect of al these mapped out swatches was quite beautiful and amazed most people when i brought it in today. which is all good.

the brief however continues today and we are to produce a fixed format book based on the information that we have gathered over christmas. i hope to create a book which document the information that i have gathered from the room showing the locations of the dust. i think the way that i have worked producing the map could become just as interesting in a book. i aim to research more guide such as pantone and maybe explore naming of colours and such and further process and analyze the content of the swatches that i have gathered, such as by hair, fibre, particle content etc and see if i can get any interesting results.

Pantone

The winter break brief subject i had chosen to look at was dust. more so the concentration of dust in certain areas i tried to find out where it was more common in areas, how you may come across in on a day to day basis etc. I finally had a finished resolution, successfully plotting 100 random swatches of dust around a single room, but what to do with this information that i had found. 

initially we got into groups and discussed what we had been looking at over christmas then we discussed how we could translate our ideas into books.

- hygiene. look at the cleanliness of areas, how it can be prevented, the bacterial colonies found within dust particles, how clean is your dust?

- the adventures of dust boy. produce a story based book on the adventures of a fictional character made out of dust, look at tim burton's work for inspiration, googly eyes!

- swatch guide. this one seemed the most promising as a successful book. looking previously at the colour guides by pantone, producing a colour guide based the different colours of dust coud be really successful, looking possible at old textures, or vintage colours or even jsut producing a dust texture guide could be really interesting.

to start off my research i've looked at the colour guides by pantone these beautiful little swatch guides have every colour under the sun that you could possible want or print. i would love to produce a guide like this which people could use if they were looking for an aged look to their

 work. 

the pantone guides the pantone guide comprise colours in a very orderly manner and have been categorised into 6 books of colour i probably don't think i could produce as many with dust swatches but maybe just one book. The six books comprise of 'formula guide/solid uncoated', 'formula guide/solid matte', 'colour bridge/coated euro' (my favourite because you can see what the colour looks like on screen and compare it to the printable version), '4 colour process guide/uncoated euro', '4 colour process guide/coated euro' and 'formula guide/solid coated' each of the books is ordered via hue, the swatches themselves are then coded with their solid state colours and the CMYK version, the colours are then labelled with their percentage of CMYK and RGB so you can re-create them. 

i think i could produce something along the same lines but using the dust swatches, i'll look at other colour guides aswell possible look at the naming of colours in dulux guides etc. in the mean time i'll look at the book design and shape, vintage design could be a start, compartments, box sets like which the pantone set is stored in.

Book of 100: Statement of Intent

dust is the general name for minute solid particles with diameters less than 500 micrometers.

dust occurs in the atmosphere from various sources uplifted by wind, volcanic eruptions and pollution.dust in homes, offices, and other human environments consists of human skin cells, plant pollen, human and animal hairs, textile fibers, paper fibers, minerals from outdoor soil, and many other materials which may be found in the local environment.

how very interesting. 

Title: Dust

Focus: Dust particles are everywhere, we produce it, we consume it, and it even affects our planet. what information could i possibly find. how do you document something so minute? how do you make it interesting?

Research: i first intend to research dust, what is it? its main components, different locations, how do they differ? how much does the average human being produce in a single day? what kinds f strange bacteria can i find in dust by culturing it? what more could i possibly find and how could i make it interesting? 

The next step would be to collect 100. i should look at collecting dust first how can i collect it. why am i going to collect it. i think this is one of the most important factors. when i have collected such samples of dust, what the hell am i going to do with it? should i monitor my health during the process just in case i catch any diseases. I need to think of more interesting ways in which I can document it myself.  having looked at the other peoples subject work to date I feel that even mundane information can become incredibly interesting, documentation of the collection of rubbish and light switches could become interesting if it is explored in the right manner and visually pleasing if designed in the right way.  I feel information that I have chosen to explore could be dull should i go down a wrong design path should be looked at again and I should see if I can make interesting representations of it. i intend to look at swatch guide first of all as i thin these could be potentially interesting and i f i find a use for the dust that i collect this could become a very productive project.

Design and Production: The new software which i am supposed to be looking at to produce the book is Indesign. apparently this should allow us to easily create fixed format, perfect bound book which i have already explored once before in the print rooms down at vernon street. after christmas i have another book-binding workshop to which i intend to produce a round spined book and i also intend to look at the simple Japanese bound quickly as well. i have recently become very comfortable working with illustrator and feel confident that this will  help my greatly in the design of the book. not as comfortable with photoshop we have already done a couple of sessions with design and generally trying to create different sort of effects within photoshop, i don't believe this will help much but if the design calls for it i will unfortunately have to learn a bit. 

Evaluation: after having some of the most intense crits this year i would expect none the less to have a lot more this coming year.  the most important type of evaluation is the type that allows further design ideas and development comes from others (constructive) - classmates and tutors. crits tutorial and general talking to my fellow classmates will be a very important way of gaining feedback on the development of my work. I intent to use my blog as a way of continually documenting and reflecting upon my evaluations and any directions/modifications that i intend to make. the thing that i believe however that may come into play much later on is processing time, it sis a factor that most people will have to take into account in their time management, it is all well and easy to process 10 sets of information but when 10 pieces of information have to process this can take a very long time to complete, of course this will depend on what kind of information i will end up dealing with but i expect some long days sat at the computer moving things and re-typing for the sake of 100. i will be completing a final evaluation at the end of the project and look at comparing what i intend to do now to what i have achieved in 5 or so weeks, which should come in useful. i should also consider at this moment in time, my book will have an audience. such things i may have to consider into who i am making this book for, does it visually engage and maybe interact effectively with the reader/viewer, as well as being being possible entertaining and well-made.