Materials - Studio Brief 03 - OUGD504

I want this publication to be extremely well presented and look unique instead of something that looks like it had been streamlined for mass production. So cheap materials is a no go, I feel the book must represent something personal to you and must be the absolute best you can possibly produce. I think this because everything in the book is your own material, every character, image and page is created by you as a designer, so therefore this piece must reflect my own practice and be representative of how far I have come in the past year.

Being a classified as an Art and Photography book almost straight away says quality to me. To combine this with quality materials and to link to the concept of the content leads me to the use of wood for the jacket of this book.

A thick veneer or balsa wood would suffice for the use of the covers:

Veneer:

The bonus of veneer is that it is solid wood, comes in many different thicknesses/textures/colours. This means I wouldn't have to go to extra effort to stain the wood.









Balsa:

Balsa is a lightweight wood mostly used for crafts in a sheet form, so it is perfect for a book bind. It is also very soft and will mature well with age, making the book look more 'old' and industrial so to speak. Only issue is, I would have to stain this wood to get a nicer shade on it, adding unnecessary work, although, I'd be able to use any stain I wanted to get the desired effect.








The brilliance with using wood as my binding material is that I can laser etch into it, utilising the university's resources. However, to do this I will need to be inducted on it, so whether I could get a group of people to join me or join another group could pose an issue. This is something I must address sooner rather than later.

For the inside of the book, I plan on using something natural feeling, not too thin, not too thick, probably around the 150gsm mark, possibly more. This is something I must experiment with in the future when I come to looking at purchasing stock.