It’s pizza time!

So I just presented my Basic Binding exercise today. I decided to create a little recipe book on how to make pizza from scratch. I liked the challenge of having to design something with a very few pages. I had to be able to show a good overview, but with enough instructions so that people can actually follow it to make their own pizzas!

I realized that I also really like the square format. Reg’s suggestion of using a proportion that is related to your book subject does help a lot!

Barbershop

Just watched Barbershop and it was a great comedy movie! It showed a lot of the social context that these places have in the African-American culture. Although the context of a lot of the Canadian barber shops that I visited are different, I think it’s important to understand a little bit of the context and types of relationships that can be formed.

I really hope I can get great stories and insights from some of the shop owners.

Updates on my book

So today I took the whole day to go around downtown Toronto taking pictures of some of the barber shops. All of them were really nice and welcoming! I was able to get some good shots, but I still feel like I need to get better pictures, especially of them in “action.”

The next steps are to get to talk and interview them maybe during this coming week. Saturday is a busy day and I felt like it wasn’t a good time to talk to them.

To do list

So here are things to do:

• write a waiver form

• go out and visit different barber shops around the city

• take photos!

• transcribe the interviews

That’s what I have to do so far!

Book Topic

So my book topic will be about barber shops. I thought it’d be an interesting topic to explore since there are a lot of them that are disappearing. I am specially interested in exploring the common elements as well as the quirks of these places.

I’m also planning on getting to know more about the owners of these shops. They probably have great stories that took place in these places and it would nice to know even their own stories of how they set their shops up and what was it like to be a barber many years ago.

If you have any suggestions of books, magazines, movies or any other kind of resource, feel free to let me know!

Show & Tell

The book I’d like to present this time is one of my favorites. It’s Martin Venezky’s “It is beautiful—then gone”. I really love his graphic style and his dedication to graphic design. The book is a collection of Venezky’s work throughout the years with an interview in which he is able to explain more about his background, education, and some significant projects.

Martin seems to be really drawn to cataloging and collecting a great number of objects, laying them out one by one until the objects or graphics create a visual style and language of its own. This attitude of cataloging different images of the same subject is emphasized throughout the entire book.

For those who judge a book by its cover

The Book Cover Archive is a great place to see a great number of book covers. It has a good number of titles and also offers a brief information on the designer and main typeface. You can also search for book covers by publishers, art directors, authors, etc.

Show & Tell

This is a book about the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). The cover is an alphabetical list of all the students whose work is featured on the book. Physically the book is quite heavy and has no hard cover. It shows the signatures and binding. On the other hand, the book has a silver gilding, which gives a very shiny and polished look.

When I first saw this book, I thought it was a very interesting combination and wasn’t so sure if this choice was the best. As I saw the work inside and read the introduction, it became clear why such choices were made. The intent of the book was not to necessarily just categorize the student work into different styles and projects, but rather to let all this varied work to be beside each other.

The absence of a hard cover with the gild captures the concept of the book quite nicely, communicating how the book contains everything from sketches and prototypes to final renderings.

This is a blog about book design

So here we are with some assignments to do. I’ll be posting shortly a quick “Show & Tell” of the book I brought to class soon!