wht is a book?

looking back over the semester I see just how much i’ve learnt. the lessons have all somehow come together to make a lot of sense, even if it didn’t seem that way at the time. for the most part of the semester i felt lost, ideas weren’t coming to me and although i had directions, none really stuck out; thats until the last few weeks.

overall i am happy with my idea and outcome, however i wish that i had more time to explore with printing methods. my ‘break through’ came to me later in the semester so it didn’t leave me much time to push it as far as i could have. as this is the case i’ll use this project to build on and explore in the future.

through out my tumblr i’ve talked about the similar thought process behind my first prototype and my final piece; even though the ideas stem from the same notion they are two very different outcomes. the reason for the contrast is the ‘collaborative’ aspect that andy stressed to us. talking to class mates, andy and also the activity where others pitched our work, all helped immensely with my concept. this is one of the more valuable lessons i’ve learned throughout this semester. 

i wouldn't call my self a minimalist, but for some reason my designs always come across as simplified. looking back i wish i had explored more in that sense; shying away from my comfort zone and consciously trying something new. not to say that i’m not happy with my design, but this is something i need to keep in mind as a student – to take every opportunity where we have full creative control. 

The idea of technology, specifically the way we use the net and it’s disruptions stuck with me through this course. My initial prototype didn’t capture the idea of ‘wht a book is’ clearly and was too open. Looking back i’m glad I didn’t stick with my original idea, it only made me strive to question ‘wht is a book?’ furthur. 

I still wanted to go with the idea of bringing our human experience of cyberspace to print - I started looking at coding and the algorithm that stands behind our precious screens today. Seeing the complexity that is code, I started to think about the countless languages we’ve developed since pre-historic times.

I wanted to take the modern code language (something that a lot of us look at as disorderly and alarming) and visually simplifying it through print. 

If we were to look at these codes online they would create completely different outcome to what it is when it’s just lines and lines of text. – It’s simple in the way that it’s structured, the colours used, the difference between <h1>heading</h1> and <p>paragraphs</p>, etc.

I wanted to integrate the subject of my book to work with the overall feel; this is why I chose to use text from The Holy Bible. The subject supports that simplified, black and white ‘stripped back’ vibe I was working towards to show the fundamentals of the processing language. 

For me, personally, it was comforting to see that in the chaotic appearance of code, there is order.

communication + technology is constantly evolving and has improved tremendously since the beginning of time. humans continue to devise new forms of communication, making human contact easier and more rapid.

dating back 40,000 years, cave paintings are the oldest known symbols for communication - using pictograms to illustrate ideas. then came along, writing, the alphabet, transmission of signals, etc.

before the the wonderful world wide web humans would communicate many different ways, starting off with simple cuneiforms, scrolls, mechanical printing type (thanks to johannes gutenberg), telegraphs, morse code, television signals, fax, floppy disks and the internet.

development.

the first image is a quick mock up of The Bible, however it came across as way too chaotic and didn’t convey that stripped back feel i was going for.

the evolving communication/language that we as humans use changes over time - this inspire the though process behind my book.

*i was clearly having way too much fun with this activity*

i always use to find processing and coding kind of daunting. to me it all seemed so complex and overwhelming. however during our workshop with karen i realised i enjoyed it more than I ever thought I would. behind all the chaos was a sense of order and that gave me comfort.

the legend of mario - a game prototype of super mario x the legend of zelda.

this activity showed me the importance of a ‘walk through’ and the how the smallest details can change the experience of the whole game.

since the first prototype, the idea of bringing our technological experiences into print has always stuck with me. my first prototype was all about mirroring the idea physically onto paper; however the outcome was a little too vague. 

while coming up with other sprints, nothing stuck to me. then, after our processing session with karen, i thought about our ‘technological experiences’ and how the essence of it all lies behind what you see on the screen. so i started looking in to the source of each website that i would visit. as someone who knows little about processing, the mayhem of it all is quiet puzzling; however, while learning basic processing, it didn’t seem as scary as i thought it was. i found it all quiet poetic in a sense. 

again, thinking about the excessive information we gather from a simple sitting at our computer; i decided to print text onto existing print matter and repeat the process. although it was a chaotic and illegible result, it resembles our mentality at our computer desks.

while looking back at my notes to come up with ideas for sprints I remembered andy mentioning someone who had used their computer mouse to trace their movement over a period of time. i though i’d try something similar, so i stuck on some pencil lead to my fingers and carried on using my laptop with a thin sheet of paper covering majority of it. it didn’t take long before the lead started snapping and coming apart, however it made for an interesting outcome. 

i decided to to scan the illustration and toy with it in Indesign. the idea to use the lines as a grid quickly came to mind, so drew up a grid and started filling in some text. this lead to some thoughts about how different the motion of technology is to our movement in real life. as you can see it’s a lot more scattered than reading a book or other print media. it mimics our mind in the sense that we’re constantly bombarded and distracted with different information through computers.