A past exhibition at the V&A, London talks about ideas I am exploring within my Collide project.
Making Memory Palace is a physically immersive illustrated story that explores the idea of an exhibition as a walk-in-book.
The article, found on the V&A website, highlights that digital publishing has not just changed the experience of readers but has also impacted the role of graphic designers and illustrators, who must ‘consider a more complex set of technological networks and possibilities as they work on-screen, where text rarely exists in isolation.’
Curator Andrew Blauvelt states, ‘in the future, most designers will be creating reading experiences not book designs’.
When designing my future self booklet for the Collide project, I aim to create an experience, rather than a traditional book format. The booklet is personal to me, and is aimed at my future self, therefore it is necessary that I make it visually interesting as technology will advance in years to come and books may become less popular.
‘While it would seem as if physical books might be losing importance, the physicality of an individual book is increasingly significant. Publishing houses experiment with material and printing techniques to create collectable cover designs and unusual formats. So if readers buy fewer ‘real’ books, it makes sense that those they do buy should be beautiful objects. This enables graphic designers and illustrators to work on book projects with more varied visual content and material qualities.’ The Dutch book designer Irma Boom, creator of some of the most highly acclaimed book designs published in recent years, observed in an interview:
‘in older days, a book was made for spreading information, but now we have the Internet to spread information. So to spread something else – maybe sheer beauty or a much slower, more thought-provoking message – it’s the book.’
The article on the exhibition discusses the modern social trend of using the internet over reading which have obtained a deeper understanding of since exploring this subject within my essay.
I aim to create a book for the physical final outcome and have carefully considered the appearance and positioning of each page when designing them to communicate a meaningful message.
Linking to Umberto Eco's 'Open Works', this article suggests that in order for people to buy books, they must be seen as interesting and beautiful. Consumers must interpret books to be something other than the norm, something beautiful and enjoyable to read. I have thought about consumer thinking and how people may perceive my work. My future self booklet will be thought provoking for me and will not be something I can obtain from the internet. The piece will be an individual, personal response therefore it is necessary to make it a reading experience.
Sky Arts Ignition: Memory Palace- About the Exhibition (2013) Retrieved from http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/exhibition-sky-arts-ignition-memory-palace/making-memory-palace/
An example of Irma Boom's work. Her books are engaging to read and are unusual to a traditional book. It shows that not all publications need to be printed in oversize.
