Creative Book Design- Exercise 1: Influential books
Consider the importance of books to you both personally and within a broader global sense.
First of all, think back to the earliest books you came across as a child, through your teenage years and early adulthood to where you are now. There may be half a dozen books which stick in your memory or are important to you in some way. There may be many more than that. It may be an early reading book, a particular image or short rhyme which helped you recognise letterforms. It may be the distressed metallic silver cover of a Salinger novel you read as a teenager, or the book you bought on impulse after work one day, seduced by the tactile quality of the cover.
Identify these books in your learning log, use photographs and annotation to create an illustrated list documenting the books that are important to you, for whatever reason.
Now, connect your influential books to those with a more global reach. Identify seminal works that have informed or challenged some of the areas you have identified. These may be scientific, artistic, historical, political, geographic, fictional, poetic or religious texts. For example, a book from your childhood could connect to other seminal children’s books by association, such as Heinrich Hoffmann’s Der Struwwelpeter / Shockheaded Peter (1845) or Charles Perrault or the Brothers Grimm. Likewise a book featuring dinosaurs might connect to Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species.
When we appreciate the breadth and influence of books, we begin to appreciate the extent of a book’s potential impact. Books carry and communicate ideas; powerful messages can be contained within seemingly innocuous bound paper pages. In your learning log, create another list of books, with accompanying images and annotations, which you believe to be more globally important, but connect to your first list in some way.
A series of books form when I was older was the ‘Secret Agent Jack Stalwart’ collection by Elizabeth Singer Hunt. The first book was released in 2007, which would make me 8 at the time. The illustrations are very bold and full of colour, a contrast to the books I enjoyed when I was learning to read.
I remember loving the narrative of a boy similar age to me being a secret agent and travelling across the world. I was obsessed with this series for a long time and remember reading them repeatedly.
I feel like these more bold and busy illustrations appeal to boys around 7-10 in particular because they are action packed and have a lot of imagery that interests people of that age such as explosions and sci-fi equipment.
Probably around a similar time, or earlier I was interested in Roald Dahl. The first book of his I read was ‘The Twits’ at school. I hardly remember the story, but can picture the illustrations by Quentin Blake. These hand made, again tactile images were brilliant, and something I hadn’t seen before.
‘The Twits’ was published by Puffin (Penguin) which is the same publisher as ‘Secret Agent Jack Stalwart’ (Red Fox) and also the same as ‘The very hungry caterpillar.’ Penguin is the most memorable of publishers by myself and probably most people as they have published so many books that were integral parts of our childhoods.
George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ published in 1945 was in a similar category as ‘Lord of the Flies’ for me, and was read around the same time. Animal farms dystopian commentary on the Soviet union under communist ruling was an eye opener for me.
I read an old version where the front cover looked like this, in a Penguin classic style. There are many front covers now this different illustrations and type, but the simplicity of the penguin classic style will remain the version I remember. The bold, simple sans serif fonts used with minimal colour was visually pleasing to me.
In my late teens I came across the work of Jordan Peterson via Youtube and was drawn to read his book. I found the front cover very appealing, the graphic created by himself was interesting and represents the content of the book well. This was around the time I was actively becoming interested in art and design.
I really enjoy the placement of the red/orange on the front cover, and now realise how deliberate that was, which is very interesting looking back.
The second part of this task was very interesting. I jotted down a ‘timeline’ style of ideas when trying to connect these books to other works and each other.
I chose to connect some through publisher, some through design, and some through their ideas/association.
I began this task by takings notes on important historical information from the brief and developing a loose plan to follow.
I have always enjoyed reading and was interested to delve further into connections between books. I thought back to my childhood to the earliest book I can remember reading (or being read to) which was ‘The very hungry caterpillar’ by Eric Carle. This sparked memories of many other books I read as a child, I wrote down the most ‘important’ or memorable ones.
Another childhood book I remember enjoying was Mr Tickle from the ‘Mr Men’ series by Roger and Adam Hargreaves. I remember liking the illustrations a lot and this being my favourite book at one point. I feel like the simplicity of the white background and the coloured illustrations works great for children, looking back I can see why I liked it so much.
Both of these books have a similar tactile style of illustration on a white background, they were released around similar times, ‘The very hungry caterpillar’ 1969 and ‘Mr Tickle’ 1971. This could be a result of inspiration from Eric Carle by Roger Hargreaves, leading to similar styles. I find it very interesting how these 2 books, similar in style stand out to me as important books of my childhood.
Around a similar age I remember also loving the Harry Potter series (published 2001.) I again obsessed over these books for a long time and would read them every day. The similar narrative is obviously something that appeals to boys of that age; a young boy, who has powers or access to equipment that makes him powerful, exploring the world and fighting evil.
The older style of books were full of dark, colourful and interesting illustrations with bold titles. I remember tracing over the ‘Harry Potter’ writing and creating posters at one point.
‘Lord of the Flies’ by William golding was published in 1954 and was one of the first times I remember reading a book and being impressed by an authors ability to convey their views on the world through a novel. Harry Potter’s narrative was like this in certain ways, but ‘Lord of the Flies’ was more directly commentary which was interesting.
I never particularly found the cover of the book visually pleasing, but understand the use of the colour/imagery now when looking back.
‘The Bell Jar’ by Sylvia Plath was published in 1963, the novel was semi-autobiographical, and I remember seeing this book on the side having being read by my mother. I think that this front cover is a more modern version, but not knowing anything about Sylvia Plath I read the book. I was solely drawn in by the close up of a face/eye, and found the colours really appealing. At the time I had no knowledge of why it looked and felt so interesting, but looking now I can understand more as to why I was drawn into reading it.
Nietzsche’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ was published in 1886, but was the first (and only) book I had read digitally. I liked Amazon’s version of the front cover, but reading a whole book digitally was not the same experience as holding a solid book, being able to turn the pages and view the cover.
It was very interesting reading about the theorist Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong during this exercise and the stages described of the development of the book. Despite digitisation being inevitable, I feel there will always be a place for the physical book.
‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’- Eric Carle was published by Penguin in 1969, ‘Secret Agent Jack Stalwart’ has the same publisher and was released 2006, they both can relate to another famous children’s author Roald Dahl, as they use the same publisher (Penguin) and Roald Dahl’s first book ‘Twenty-Nine Kisses’ was published in 1969, the same year as Eric Carle’s. Roald Dahl’s first book was a short story collection for adults, but Dahl went onto creating some of the most known and read children’s books ever.
‘Secret Agent Jack Stalwart’ can be connected to Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of time’ due to it’s inclusion of travelling through time and sci-fi elements. Despite the series of children’s books being vastly different to the work of Hawking, it broadly works off of the physics principals that are discussed by Hawking. The two books also are published by Penguin, which shows how diverse Penguin’s publishing is, including children’s books (Puffin) and a scientific book by Hawking.
‘The Twits’ is an example of Dahl’s children’s books, which were illustrated by Quentin Blake. Blake illustrated other books by Dahl such as ‘Danny the Champion of the World’, ‘The BFG’ and ‘Esio Trot.’ ‘The Twits’ can connect to the novel ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce, due to the famous illustrated version by Henri Matisse where a limited amount were created. The illustration style of black and white, quite loose lines relate together, despite the difference in content of the books they are for.
Henri Matisse and Quentin Blake
Mr Tickle and The Lorax
‘Mr Men Mr Tickle’ was published in 1971. This is connected to Dr Seuss’ famous book ‘The Lorax’ as it was published the same year. The colourful illustrations for children are also a linking point. Both books include very bold colours, Dr Seuss’ more so than the Hargreaves’ but these are both reasons as to why the books appeal so well to children. The use of interesting fictional characters created by these 2 authors also connects the books, the time period they were published could be a factor in the reason for their broadly similar style.
George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ relates to ‘Lord of the Flies’ for many reasons. They were both books which I would class were very influential to me when reading them as a young teenager for similar reasons. I looked into comparing them to other more broad influential books, but found the comparisons between them both intriguing.
The use of animal metaphors, directly in ‘Animal Farm’ and more indirectly in the title of ‘Lord of the Flies’ to present hierarchies of power and looking at social construction and peoples relationships was a big similarity. I wonder if Golding was directly inspired by Orwell.
These both relate to ‘The Bell Jar’ by Sylvia Plath as they are quite nihilistic and delve into subjects such as life and death. Despite the different content from these 2 books and ‘The Bell Jar’ similar themes are explored.
All 3 of these books could be linked with the iconic ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ by Solzhenitsyn. They all explore similar themes, Solzhenitsyn’s work particularly links with Orwells ‘Animal Farm’ despite it being non-fiction as it comments on real oppression and a dystopia that almost became a reality for the western world.
‘Beyond Good and Evil’ by Nietzsche looks into the will of individuals, and their relationship within the world. This is similar to ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ which was published in the same year; 1886. This is very interesting as Zeitzsche’s book is non-fiction, but Steveson’s is fiction, yet through them both they are able to explore human desires and the question of the meaning of life. Both authors must’ve felt a particular desire to delve deeper into these themes at this time period.
I was intrigued to begin this task, to explore the similarities and differences between books influential to me and between those of a broader reach. I found the outcomes very interesting, especially when linking seemingly dissimilar books to well known others, such as the children’s book ‘Secret Agent Jack Stalwart’ and ‘A Brief history of Time.’ I enjoyed comparing the visual aspects and the ideas communicated through different books.
This task has broadened my view of books, how they are interconnected and communicate similar themes, some more abstractly than others.
