Bound and in the bag

Here are the spreads and some photos of my final Design Authorship project entitled "-jectivity: a search engine encyclopedia". This work asks the reader to question the quality of information referenced everyday by internet users (aka basically everyone) and compare this method of fact finding with those of the past. Presented in the guise of an actual encyclopedia, the subjective information pulled from search engine output is presented in the style of Neue Graphik - a design aesthetic pioneered to reveal objectivity in graphic content.

Getting my hands dirty

This week I worked on finalizing the layout of the letter pages of my book of which there will be 26 total. Using the content I have for letter 'F' and topic 'Facebook' and keeping swiss modernism in mind, I came up with both regular and reversed out options.

Then it was time to do some mocking up which meant time to finally tear up my encyclopedias. Since I don't plan to use any part of volume three for my final book, I'm using it to test printing and binding. To get some pages out of the book in tact, I found the center of a folio and snipped the thread holding it into the binding.

Then I trimmed a few of the pages down to A4 size and sent them through my ink jet printer. To my delight, both drafts turned out legible and the paper didn't jam. I'm thinking now of alternating both styles throughout. For my final book, I will trim them further to create a full bleed look.

I then removed the cover and binding from volume three.

I estimate my book will consist of about 32 pages or 16 folded pieces of paper. These will work nicely in two eight-page folios.

I slapped some tape on this version to bind it but for my final, I want to speak with a printer about my options. I'm hoping I can get someone to perfect bind it for me but I may have to explore coil or ring bindings.

Next week: more content, more layout!

Design Project B: Layout options

I started thinking about how I could lay out the opposing bits of information for each topic of my book. I need it to look organized yet chaotic and still prove my point. Typography will be the main star of the book and I'm very much inspired by the Swiss modernists' applications. I also thought it would be interesting to lay out my book using a technique created in the same time period as the encyclopedias were published.

I took a look at the works of Karl Gerstner, Siegfried Odermatt, Carlo Vivarelli and Josef Muller-Brockmann to name a few as well as found some interesting use of word collage online:

I was particularly drawn to the work of Herbert Leupin and his use of newspaper collage to create illustration. This led to the solution to print my book reversed out on the encyclopedia pages, allowing the old "objective" words to form the new "subjective" information:

 
I also was incredibly inspired by a quote I found in "Graphic Design: A Concise History" by Richard Hollis - "Neue Graphik consummated the desires of the pre-war pioneers for objectivity in visual communication." I think it will be an interesting contradiction to communicate a lack of objectivity in modern information sources by using a layout technique that was designed to portray objectivity.  The following is a simple exercise inspired by this quote:

 

Next week: layout mock ups!

Design Project B: Research and content

The following is a compilation of my notes and thoughts thus far for my Design Authorship project. I'm very much interested in exploring the vast differences between how people used to seek out information and how they interact with it today. Obviously, the introduction of technology has had an incredible impact on information design. I'm also interested in uncovering how this has impacted objectivity and subjectivity in the so called 'facts' we absorb today.

Brainstorm mapping of information sources:

I bought a small set of Reader's Digest encyclopaedic dictionaries from 1964 and proposed to create something that looks like an official information source from the past on the outside but when you open it, you'd see smatterings of jumbled information taken about the same topic from different online information sources.

From there I began to brainstorm current and historical topics that have a lot of controversy surrounding them.

I want to pursue one topic per letter. I drafted some content for one topic I know I want to do - 'Facebook' - simply by Googling the term:

 

Next up I'd like to explore layout options.

Working timeline for semester two

The following are draft production timelines for Design Project B and Business for Design.

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