Books

Location: Library at Unico Hotel, Madrid
 

Tiny Libraries, DIY Reading Rooms, and Other Micro Book Depots

Link: Tiny Libraries, DIY Reading Rooms and Other Micro Book Depots

Suzanne Dean: the secret to a good book cover

Suzanne Dean designed the cover for the Man Booker prize winner 'The Sense of an Ending' by Julian Barnes. She talks about creating some of the most striking book jackets of the past 20 years.

To judge a book by its cover is so patently unwise that it has long been a metaphor for other forms of misinterpretation. But only a very naive author would suppose that the cover of his or her book was irrelevant. It’s the first thing we see, and there’s no way to make it entirely objective: a book’s cover offers an interpretation of its contents – some inflection, if only by its typeface or colour. And yet its effect on the reader is mostly subliminal. Book designers are the ultimate hidden persuaders...


Full article: Telegraph

Library launches "Europe's oldest book" appeal

LONDON (Reuters) - The British Library has launched an appeal to help it buy the oldest book in Europe, an "almost miraculous" survival from the Anglo Saxon period over 1,000 years ago.

The small volume was buried with one of England's most popular saints, Saint Cuthbert at a time when the country was being swept by continental invasions following the departure of the Romans, and despite its age is still in perfect condition with its original leather cover.

The Library is now just 2.75 million pounds from its target of 9 million pounds to buy the Cuthbert Gospel.

The book was loaned to the library in 1979 and has stayed there ever since but if the bid is successful it will stay there permanently.

It has also been agreed that if the gospel is purchased, it will spend half the year at Durham Cathedral, where the saint is buried.

St Cuthbert, also known as the "wonder worker of Britain," died in AD 687 and was buried on the Northumbrian island of Lindisfarne. He was widely regarded as Britain's most popular saint up until the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.

When Viking raiders invaded Lindisfarne in 875, a group of monks fled, taking Cuthbert's body with them. After seven years of travelling with the body, the monks finally buried the saint again at what became Durham Cathedral.

The book was found with him when his coffin was reopened in 1104.

The book, written in Latin, is the Gospel of John. After it was taken from the coffin it was placed in a new shrine behind the altar of Durham Cathedral.

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England by Henry VIII in the 16th century, the text passed to a series of private collectors.

Chief Executive of the Library, Dame Lynne Brindley, said in a statement: "The St Cuthbert Gospel is an almost miraculous survival from the Anglo-Saxon period, a beautifully preserved window into a rich, sophisticated culture that flourished some four centuries before the Norman Conquest.

(Reporting by Sam Watts; Editing by Steve Addison)

Organizing the Bookcase by Sean Ohlenkamp and Lisa Ohlenkamp

Hoon Kim - 30 Beautiful Everyday Sounds

Hoon Kim
30 Beautiful Everyday Sounds
New York, NY: H. Kim. 2009

Synopsis: This collection of bold, black and white pixelated patterns was created using a system that translates sound into pattern, relying on pitch and volume to determine the size and shape of the pixels. Graphic designer Hoon Kim interprets 30 sounds, ranging from a baby’s sneeze and a ticking alarm clock to the sound of bread being sliced, or of silence.

Category: Book
Pages: 64 p.
Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 20.5 x 20.5 cm.
Cover: Paperback
Binding: staple bound
Process: offset-printed
Color: black-and-white

Bookshelf Porn

Link: Bookshelf Porn

Noise book (update)

Just had word that my proposal for a chapter in the publication prompted by the Bigger Than Words conference was successful. So that's something to look forward to in 2011.

It will be amazing that this work will actually culminate in something in a book that ends up in a library.

Bigger Than Words: finished

The Noise conference went well last week. I was particularly impressed by the sheer breadth of contributions. I didn't get chance to catch everything I was interested in due to various panels clashing. That said, some amazing and inspiring views on the subject and Dave dropped in for the showing of The Beat Is Law plus I met Cabaret Voltaire's Stephen Mallinder who was a really nice, interesting bloke. Additionally Michael Goddard has said that there is interest from publishers in the papers that will hopefully prompt two books [each looking at different aspects of the phenomena: roughly along the lines of Noise in Music/Noise Musics and the Aesthetics/Philosophy/Politics of Noise].

I forgot to use my camera but Rosa Menkman - whose own work is concerned with glitches in technology - posted some here.

Report cover

I've nearly finished the report for this project and for a while I have been talking about producing it in the format of a paperback book. So I just need to do a few more hours on it and then I can send it for printing. The above is the cover image which is based on the Marber Grid that was interesting me right at the beginning of the project. I've also used the Akzidenz Grotesk font for the title which relates to those vintage Penguin and Pelican paperbacks but the other text is using the British Library's favoured Syntax.

More recently I had become interested in the idea of noise from the perspective of it being very much about personal perception - despite wanting to produce something that felt like it was a very objective overview. One of the key things that was brought in of late was the visual disruption that can also come from resolution and - following the earlier method of printing material and re-scanning to lose some of its detail plus the use of the enlarged pixel - I've been producing images that combine different dpi outputs. This idea was also applied to the book cloth with the above shape being made up of the same piece being scanned at different sizes so that there's a contrast between the woven surfaces. I had also been manipulating the images during scanning to build on this idea of disruption within space so that crept in too. Plus there's the geometric forms that relate to my liking for textbook-type imagery.

Hoepfully this report element will be complete today and I can mainly focus on completing the CD packaging deliverable over the next fortnight.

Sorted Books by Nina Katchadourian

A really nice project from Nina Katchadourian that arranges books to create new, readable messages/narratives through their titles.

As a sub-project of 'Special Collections', the idea was translated into an exhibition in the reading room of a library in California. I like this idea of reclassification. And even John Cage gets in there. Result.

Penguin 1980s covers by John Squire

From Creative Review via Dave:

Penguin launched its Decades series this month, with five titles each representing the best novels of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. We really liked the covers for the 1980s series, designed by a man perhaps more known for his art (and the Stone Roses): John Squire...

The plans for the series were announced earlier this year (and covered in Design Week) and are part of Penguin's 75th anniversary celebrations. But we thought Squire's efforts, which hit the shops this month, were so nice that they warranted a post. Squire created a series of paintings for the covers under the direction of Penguin's Jim Stoddart.

You can view the rest of the covers for classics from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, here. They were created by Peter Blake (50s), Allen Jones (60s), and Zandra Rhodes (70s) under the art direction of John Hamilton at Penguin.

Available via the following links:

Hawksmoor (Penguin Decades)
An Ice-cream War (Penguin Decades)
Latecomers (Penguin Decades)

Proposed internal image

Another visual idea for the inside of this book. This one uses aspects of the grid that was previously mentioned alongside some photography of the space.

I made some notes the other day and mentioned something about how visual disruption within depictions of the environment could be a metaphor for the noise that exists there. The above was an attempt to illustrate that idea although, for me, there's something a bit disturbing about the image.

Independent's The New Review: The Design Issue

The New Review supplement that comes with the Independent was a design special today. It contains a lot of interesting material but, for me, it was the feature on book covers (coinciding with the Faber & Faber exhibition at the V&A) that immediately stood out. It includes some interesting perspectives from the people involved in making book covers about their way of approaching the task and the difficulties involved with distilling a very detailed story into one definitive image.

There's also a shopping page based around what you can purchase in museum and gallery gift shops. (That one is is online: www.independent.co.uk/life-style.)

Old vs New

One thing that I've been considering is how to bring together the heritage that the British Library represents and more contemporary ideas. The building itself could already be perceived as not being sympathetic to the more historic aspects of the organization's activities, so I'm suggesting that I don't have to develop something that has some "sentimental" appreciation of the past. However, we discussed in the group tutorial a while back how this product would work for two audiences: one that holds the belief that it captures the essence of the British Library and one that sees it more as a design-led curiosity.

One decision I've made is to ensure that externally it doesn't feel like it leans too strongly one way or the other. I really like the book cloth when used with strong typography and feel that it presents a good, but simple, fusion of modern and traditional. So the intention is to bind the package (as a book) with the cloth with some basic information presented in a strong, graphic way. The text will adhere to the British Library's brand guidelines.

Internally I want it to be more challenging and blend a number of different elements: the sound visualizations, the documentation of the environment, the grids based on the axonometric views, copy relating to the organization, etc. The above referenced images are to help illustrate another suggestion: the coming together of the traditional elements with the contemporary. The idea is that this kind of suggestion of the historic alongside obvious digital age additions is more than just a way of highlighting a visual tension between disparate elements. It actually represents a shorthand for the way that the organization works and would also be defining a style that is supposed to work on a cheekier, irreverent level in addition to it also being able to suggest a weightier, respectful approximation when read by a different audience.

Grafik issue 185

The latest issue of Grafik is out and its devoted to the subject of music. There's a good feature on Manchester design agency Music, but the rest is mainly concerned with the importance of sound to visually literate creatives (i.e. not just designers).

I particularly like the 'Dataphonics' by Ryoji Ikeda (picture 4). There is also a really nice feature on Hyphen books. Anyway, I reckon that there's enough content relevant to my work to warrant the £9 price tag.

[By the way, Kick-Ass is great.]

Virtual Worlds Research book

I completed my Virtual Worlds research book today. It was also an opportunity to try working with some of the materials that I'll be using for the Negotiated Project deliverable.

What this process demonstrated was that I need to be more patient. It could certainly be more precisely executed but isn't that bad. At least not for a first effort.

Book colourway

I purchased the paper that I will be using for this Sounds from the British Library project. The inspiration for the colourway was the bookcloth I already bought and the Sshhh image [the recent one with the tessellated triangles]. The cover and end pages are more red while, internally, it should be a selection of fairly rough greys, a sort of washed-out lilac and something that I can probably best describe as a very bleached Elastoplast pink.

Two of those muted tones are courtesy of them being sugar paper which has a surface I like and takes print really nicely. I also remembered that sugar paper has a habit of losing its colour when it has been stored in sunlight. I wondered if this is something that I'd like to try and incorporate - just to knock the colour back that bit more and perhaps have some variation and 'age' under the print. I haven't really got time to let nature take its course so I made a weak bleach solution which I applied on a sheet of each. Unfortunately contact with liquid really ripples the stock. I don't know if this is permanent or not. In any case, I'm not really sure if the effect is a bit too uncontrolled to work within how I now envisage this product.













Additionally, I've realised that the colourway is very similar to the one that I picked for this blog.

Dog Ears by Tal Brosh

There's an interesting project by Tal Brosh over at http://www.talbrosh.com/. It fully explores what I was only just hinting at when developing the Earmark logo.

Really nice to see a book focus in on something that often goes ignored. The other work on the site is well worth a look too.

Book prints

I attempted to print out my concertina book as described in the earlier posts: on one long sheet of paper. However the page setup didn't come with an option for a three metre long print so I spent a couple of hours Googling my way around a load of dull forums that were busy discussing custom and default paper sizes. Which is even more ridiculous given that today we actually have nice weather and I should really have been making the most of that.

Anyway I eventually found some info regarding my brand of printer and how you can add a custom paper size. The only problem was that its parameters were set to do no more than a length just over 70cm. Subsequently I've had to run off a number of prints and I will have to join them up. I think the trick for joining pages for concertina books is to do them at the inner fold and not the outer fold. I think the joins will be less conspicious there while also less likely to come apart.

I also altered the colours as it was looking a litlle too washed-out. The blue, pink and purple tones appear to compliment the cover. The lining paper additionally turned out to be a nice surface with some decent weight to it.