Binding a book is stressful.

I have only been to two book binding workshops before and today I went to the print room to bind it by myself. My book has a soft cover and I had never done a book like this before. I also printed the front cover.

Key things I learnt from the binding process:

• I didn't want page numbers on my book because I had numbered the tips and i thought there were too many numbers on one page and it was confusing for the eye. BUT page numbers make it much easier to work out the order when sewing. I made a big mistake which I luckily noticed just before it was too late- i sewed and glued a signature in the wrong place and i had to start the sewing again.
• If possible, keep a spare piece of paper around the edge of it to try and keep the pages clean.
• Its really important to get the spine width right once printed. My book was a lot smaller than the paper i had printed onto (allows a neater trim to right size) and it took a tedious amount of time to work out the correct measurements for everything- it all has to be very precise. The best thing is to stitch and glue the book , measure how big the spine has to be and then adjust the cover and print while the glue is drying.

printing and mounting the cover:

• I could print on brown paper but i had to manually feed it
• One of the tech. guys in the Vernon Street mac suites showed me how to create a cover on Photoshop- i had created mine in InDesign, but Photoshop is best

a selection of debt advisor companies I have looked at:

http://www.thedebtadvisor.co.uk/home.aspx

http://www.debtfreedirect.co.uk/

and a local one in Leeds:

http://www.leedsdebthelpline.co.uk/

Jewellery Price...

We don't know how much to sell the Jewellery/ Keyrings at the exhibition for... we have done some market research but all the ones for sale in the shops are WAY too pricey for what we want (in ARK the wooden ones are £25!) http://www.arkclothing.com/Accessories/Jewellery/Necklaces/Stolen_Thunder_E_Initial_Necklace1.html

Printing

I printed my book this morning. I printed it in the digital print room in Blenheim, I had never used this resource before... I was shown how to send a Adobe InDesign book document to the printer with all my preferred settings. Key things to remember:

• Package the InDesign document. This ensures the computer knows where all the images are kept and makes it much easier when printing
• Work out how many signatures needed and send each one to the printer separately
• Make sure the InDesign document size is the size you want it before printing

Final Cover

I asked around and everyone preferred this cover best...

..because:

• positioning of the illustration
• sideways 101 the same size as pig

I want to continue the black silhouette theme on the cover. However, I saw a sketchbook in a shop today which had brown paper as the cover. I really liked this aspect and thought it would suit my book: it is cheap yet effective as it reflects the 'cheap' idea.

I will need to think about:

• size of the cover- the size of the spine/ the distance between the front and back when printing
• whether brown paper will actually work in a printer or will i have to screen print?
• brown paper is too thin as a cover for what i want to do, i will have to mount it on some thicker card.. is this possible when soft binding a book, or will it pucker?

Goals for this final week:

1. MONDAY AM: (1) Print book (booked into Blenheim digital print 10am)
2. TUESDAY: (1) Bind book (2) start assembling jewellery for exhibition (3) Print off postcard for exhibition (3)
3. WEDNESDAY: (1) Help set up exhibition (2) Assemble jewellery
4. THURSDAY: (1) Set up exhibition
5. DEADLINE

Title

I originally wanted to call my book "101 Top Tips on How To Save Money" however, after doing research I thought that this was a bit obvious and... common.

I decided to make it more of-the-moment and call it "101 Austerity Measures for 2011".

Austerity refers to the economic issues society is experiencing at the moment. I know it's not a common word, but as the book is aimed at debt advisor's customer's they will straight away realise the book's meaning.

Initial front cover ideas

I think I am going to use this illustration on the front cover of the book as a classic symbol of saving money.

Popcorn 2

I found the popcorn image the most difficult to draw. It was hard to get the actual popcorn silhouette right as they don't really have a distinctive shape.

The first image is my original illustration. I thought it looked ok, and you could tell what it was, until I asked for feedback. Someone thought it was a burning skyscraper. Although it doesn't really matter if it's not obvious what the image is as the text will be supporting it, I still wanted to change it.

I went to the cinema and bought a pot of popcorn. I changed the image by making the cardboard popcorn box wider and the frills at the top edge of the box more stand out more. I also defined the shape of the actual popcorn and added some popcorn at the base of the box.

From this process I learnt that it is important to get feedback on what you are doing from others.

Honey Body Scrub 2

The top image was my original illustration for a honey jar. I asked people whether they could tell what was in the jar and they said it wasn't obvious, you had to take a while to work it out from the honey spoon.

To develop the image further it was suggested that I add a couple of bees into the illustration. I hand drew the bees then scanned and adjusted them as if it were one of the other images. Finally they were resized and placed onto the honey jar document in Photoshop before Live Tracing the image.

Things to do before print:

1. Book session in digital print room
2. Sort out type and layout
3. Piggy bank illustration
4. Washing car illustration
5. Sock pupet illustration
6. Sort out popcorn illustration
7. Add bees to honey pot illustration
8. FRONT COVER

Audience

Originally I set out to create a book for people who are struggling in todays economic climate. However, if they where tight for money, why would they spend what little money they have on a book? From this realisation and after today's Crit, I have decided to make my target audience more specific:

• I am creating the book for debt advisers to give out to clients for free. The debt advisor company will buy the books and give them to their struggling clients.

The black and white illustrations will make it cheaper to produce then full colour illustrations, an aspect which fits with the audience.

To also make the book cheap to produce, I want it to have a soft cover... something I have not done before.

Type...

After much debate, I have changed the font to sans- serif (Baskerville).

• I think it is more formal so fits with the target audience and it makes it look "old- fashioned" fitting with my victorian style silhouette illustrations.
• Gives the impression that these tips have been tried and tested: passed down from generation to generation. This links with the fact that I personally asked people for their money saving top tip.
• The fact that the illustrations are black and white means that it can be printed and made really cheaply: for the debt advisers and their clients they will be more interested in the content rather than the appearance, although this does still matter as it need to be appealing

Final Crit 02/02/11

• Choose font in relation to audience
• Decide on audience- a cheap or free book for a hard- up audience or a beautifully produced art book for an audience of collectors?

Curatorship:

Curator

noun

a keeper or custodian of a museum or other collection.
Curator Responsibilities:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curator

In smaller organizations, a curator may have sole responsibility for the acquisition and care of objects. The curator will make decisions regarding what objects to collect, oversee their care and documentation, conduct research based on the collection, provide proper packaging of art for transport, and share that research with the public and scholarly community through exhibitions and publications. In very small volunteer-based museums, such as local historical societies, a curator may be the only paid staff member.

In larger institutions, the curator's primary function is as a subject specialist, with the expectation that he or she will conduct original research on objects and guide the organization in its collecting. Such institutions can have multiple curators, each assigned to a specific collecting area (e.g. Curator of Ancient Art, Curator of Prints and Drawings, etc.) and often operating under the direction of a head curator. In such organizations, the physical care of the collection may be overseen by museum collections managers or museum conservators, and documentation and administrative matters (such as insurance and loans) are handled by a museum registrar.

Austerity

A great article from The Guardian newspaper on the 1st Feb about austerity:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/01/economy-economics

Laser Cutter

For the exhibition on the 11th February, Katy and I are making and selling jewellery and key rings. Today we booked two sessions on the laser cutter to cut out the robot, polar bear, owl and squirrel. The robot and polar bear were cut form acrylic plastic and the others were cut from wood. We wanted to cut more form the wood material but for some reason we always have difficulty with it...