Books can range greatly in its content, from Dictionaries to takeaway pamphlets and a Bible to Darwin's Origin of Species, all of which are the same thing, a book. The main noticeable difference between them all the content, whether it is to inform, educate, advertise or to simply write down your thoughts.
Notebooks
I love a good notebook, the aesthetic and feel of it is always more satisfying than a word or indesign document stored on my computer. It is physical and not on screen. You are free to write, draw, doodle or create idea's however you want.
Below is an image of my absolute favourite series of notebooks, the Eames House of Cards collection:
This shows how something with an effective cover can be so appealing to the right audience. A book should grab your attention, whether it is through the meaning of its content, design, layout, functionality, or even by its cover, as you can tell I never did like the saying 'Don't judge a book by its cover', in this case, I'd say it's worthy of being excused.
The Eames couple are a huge inspiration to many, this meaning that a notebook like this would be more suited to someone who knows who they were and what they did, although on the contrary, that is not to say someone would chose this because of its function, these to me are a great alternative to the more bland looking moleskine, which are also blinded using the same technique, the perfect bind.
But people will chose what they want based on their desires, which if you need blank pages to add ink to, any kind of notebook will do. Providing you're not so keen on the saying 'Form follows function', you know, if you're into that sort of thing...
Magazines
I am choosing to look at a few different zines to give me an idea of what kind of things are on the market and how the are portrayed in my own eyes. Analysing different publications in and out will give me a good perspective on how I would like to treat my own designs in the future.
Little White Lies
LWL is a movie review mag which often include many cover arts by designers, illustrators and artists alike. I's all about the cover with this mag, they have little content on the front to encourage the reader to look more into he content of it rather than it be spoon fed to the audience through cheesy, unnecessary bold type scattered all over the show. Which you will certainly see below.
It will often attract the kind of person that prefers a more sophisticated style of magazine, that will tell them what they need to know about the latest and upcoming movies with no hassle. OK!
Dare I go there. OK! magazine, I like to refer to this as The Star and The Sun's love child. The epitome of red top style publication. Target audience as simple as its cover design, content is predictable and easy to read for this very reason.
Not comparable to the other magazines I have chosen, although I like to keep my research varied and this is an extremely poor example of a book, but, it is still a book and is relevant for this research.
i-D
A zine relating to fashion culture. i-D is a great example of how to get it right. I like how they keep the focal point of the magazine to the image on the front with a logo in the same place every time, and a little list that doesn't obscure from any of the other elements no the page.
So, to sum up, I have focussed mainly on magazines because the outcome of this project is similar. Taking a varied approach has helped me realise what I need to avoid and similarly what I want to look for when I come to produce my 10 page spread 'book'.
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