OUGD404 What is a book? Study Task One (Studio Brief Two)

We were put into groups and were asked to answer the question:

1. What is a book?

 To begin, I looked at the dictionary definition.

The definition said a book must have pages and be bound in some way, meaning it doesn't really leave a lot of room for interpretation, however other people have different opinions on whether a book needs to be bound, for example newspapers could technically be seen to be a book, however under this definition they aren't.

As a group, we came up with some words associated with books to try to figure out a personal definition. Some of the words we came up with are below.

• Binding
• Pages
• Informative
• Product
• Cover
• Stock
• Images
• Text

We came to a conclusion that we could define a book as:

"A series of sequential information bound into a folded document" - to be more vague, it could also be defined as something that physically informs people, this opens the definition to include things such as leaflets, kindles and newspapers, which could originally not be classed as books.

2. What is the purpose of a book?

As a group, we came up with different ideas, such as:

• To inform
• To discourage
• To entertain
• To Persuade

Overall, however, the answer was to transfer information from one knowledgable person to another willing to learn. We discussed the idea that a book is more personal than just reading a webpage or poster as its something you can physically hold in your hands and because of this you're likely to take in more information.

3. How is a book constructed?

Firstly, we thought about how the physical aspects such as pagination, binding, stock, glue and folding changes the feel of books. The second aspect would be from the author's view who would construct a book from words, paragraphs and chapters.

4. What are your two favourite books?

My first favourite book has to be 'Hate Mail' by Mr. Bingo. I like this book a lot as I find it really interesting that people would actually pay for insults to be sent to them through the post. I think it's a really niche market and the recipitents have got to have a very good sense of humour and must be self-confident. I ordered this book from his website and paid extra so that he would send me a signed copy. This is my signature, which I think is hilarious. 

My second favourite book is probably my Carhartt Fall/Winter 2013 Collection, as I think the designs are incredibly slick and everything follows the same grid and flows really fluently. The photography style and generally layout really fit well, and I also think it's really effective that some pages just use a complete block colour which breaks up the different clothing.