Creative Book Design- Assignment 4: Altered Book
Using a found book, significantly alter the appearance of the pages to create a new volume that is personal to you. This can be any kind of book that is of interest to you. For example, a fiction book, a non-fiction book, a picture book or a photo book.
Change the book from its original form into a different form, altering the appearance and/or meaning. Apply an inventive, intuitive response to materials and how these can be exploited within the context of the altered book.
I began this task by thinking about which book could work well and evoke interesting ideas. I also considered this part of the question in particular: ‘Change the book from its original form into a different form’ and how far I could push this concept within the wide parameters of the assignment.
I collated the main pages that I would like to focus on, and ones which present interesting ideas to explore visually.
I decided to print/collage/stick elements onto individual pages and then bind them once I had constructed a new narrative for the original book. I used cooked paper, which I previously had spilt different liquid on, or rubbed outside along the floor, which created interesting textures once cooked. I wanted the cooked paper to represent the ‘age’ of ‘questions’ that Hawking presents ‘brief answers to’ and even time itself, to show how humans have always questioned.
Here are some images of the books I was debating between using for my altered book. Eric Gill’s ‘An essay on typography’ was recommended to me via my tutor and is a very interesting book with great ideas/words/elements that could evoke imagery or mark making for an altered book. The next was Jordan Peterson’s ‘12 Rules for Life’ a book with great content to change/navigate through adding images and mark making etc. The next was a random book I use as textures/old paper for collages, I really like the aged aesthetic of the pages and type. The last and in the end was my choice is Stephen Hawking’s ‘Brief answers to the big questions’ this is a great book title and the contents of the book brings some interesting ideas to mind for me to explore.
I collated some mood boards using my artist book collection from the first research task of this project. The works of Mario Picardo, David Carson and Dieter Roth have been particularly influential to my approach to this assignment and design in general.
I jotted some initial ideas and quick thumbnails of visuals that I could refer to as I looked through the book and decided on which pages to keep and which to remove.
Focusing on ‘Change the book from its original form into a different form’ I was unsure of whether it is not what the brief is asking but as it is quite open I moved forwards with the idea: To use various printing method to transfer and edit the contents of the book into a new book. This could either be a notebook, an existing sketchbook, or individual pages I can bind using binding methods explored in the previous task.
I began by scanning in the contents page, and reprinting it using a laser printer onto the cooked paper. I wanted to begin with the book in chronological order, and then become more abstract in hopes to build a narrative.
I went onto isolating particular questions from the contents page that I will look into within the book.
I transferred the image from near the foreword of Stephen Hawking as a child using acetone which created an interesting texture. I had edited the image digitally in order to make the highlights more white and to add a grain to the image using filters.
I tested using an image I had created from early on during my OCA course, which I felt related to some of the words I had highlighted from the index pages. ‘Oppenheimer’ who was one of the people who created the atomic bomb brought this imagery of a Russian missile to mind. I tested with crayon and running this through the printer, which didn’t turn out how I thought.
A more negative and emotive style was emerging as I continued to work and read through the pages. I was linking science to atrocities within the world. Continuing using red I took some fragile stickers and tested with how they look distressed and damaged.
I then went onto combining this with quite a distressing image I came across of a child crying. The quote which inspired this was ‘What was God doing before he made the world? Preparing a place in hell for people who asked’
Referring to one of my initial ideas, I took the word ‘how?’ which appeared a lot within the book and spray painted it. I liked the texture of the spray paint and scanned in the images, testing with scale and composition digitally. The end result was interesting, the word was nearly illegible, but also looked like ‘now’ and ‘how’ which I felt was relevant and a happy accident.
I went onto test printing this using my printer, which cannot print onto a5 borderless. I found a method of sticking the page onto another piece of paper and running that through the printer allowed it to work.
‘Will we survive on earth’ was a question I had focused on from the contents page of the book. I wanted to create a surreal image of an astronaut landing on another planet. I edited imagery of astronauts and apollo 1, including some trees and attempted to acetone transfer these across 2 pages which wasn’t successful. I went onto printing these across pages randomly in an attempt to create an interesting image, later readjusting the composition in Photoshop for the final version.
Some previous feedback from my zine assignment was to create an image across the spread of 2 pages. The print of a boot, was intended to look like the foot prints on the moon, spreading across 2 pages making the design more dynamic and interesting.
I tested with some writing and again using acetone to transfer the writing onto the pages, to create a front and possible back cover to my book.
I tested further with running prints through the printer multiple times, without layering them in Photoshop prior to this, to get a more ‘random’ affect. The randomness I wanted to relate to a sense of chaos that was developing within the images.
I continued to piece together the work I had created to form a narrative that related to it’s original form, but now has new meanings through imagery and mark making.
Once the order was decided I used the PVA glue binding method explored in the last task to bind my book together. I really like the raw edges of the paper and the papers different colours showing along the edge.
Final:
I enjoyed this assignment and am pleased with some of my outcomes. This book was massively inspired by Dieter Roth’s diaries and David Carson’s work, in particular from ‘The End of Print’. Those artists were my main reference points throughout this process along with others such as Julian Schnabel. Looking back I feel as if I could’ve created more work and had a larger selection to choose from when ordering the pages. I also think that maybe keeping within the structure of the original book could of created interesting designs as it is more limited. Despite this I feel that the themes explored within Stephen Hawking’s ‘Brief answers to the big questions’ are presented within my book, along with a my own narrative I developed relating to these themes.
