Brief 15_An exhibition of Paris, collaboration with Lisa Burns The Brief
PICTORIAL
‘A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.’
An exhibition of Paris Context
‘Paris, the world’s most popular city destination, has plenty of must-see places but make sure you spend at least a day strolling off the beaten path, as this is the only way to discover the real Paris: a lively cosmopolitan but undeniably French city.’ Create a visual journey that captures the true cultural essence of Paris from an artistic designers perspective.
Brief
Through the predominant use of photography capture the look, feel and culture of Paris. Through ongoing research and documentation of your experience in Paris gather information and visuals in regards to specific chosen themes such as Parisian architecture, pattern, signage, the French language, people and fashion. After organising and editing prepare your images to be displayed through print (publication) and web (blog)
Preparation/Research suggestions
Research Paris as a city and subject, look at how bloggers and photographers have documented Paris and other cities in terms of location, artistic imagery, people and places. You will need to research into possible locations to visit when in Paris and consider various themes to photograph. Research into photography wall displays and editorial layout.
Brief 15_An exhibition of Paris, collaboration with Lisa Burns Research
Film Photography
Primary Research & Planning Primary research and planning were key in making up the content of the book. As Lisa and I were both going to Paris within a few weeks of each other we planned exactly what kind of things we would need to capture and how we would plan the time we had there. The idea was to try and get as many visuals as possible through digital photography. I also wanted to experiment with a film camera, which I had only limited experience with. I thought if the film photographs were a success they could be used in a seperate publication. Planning was essential and we discussed the areas we wanted to focus on the most such as Parisian architecture, signage etc. These were some of the film photos that I had taken whilst there which I think have turned out well, I think using a film camera obtains an authenticity and a certain style that cannot be replicated in the same way through digital photography. Lisa and I wanted to create a small publication with a selection of photographs depicting a certain style about Paris. The layout would be simple with limited text, but processes will be used to add quality to the overall design outcome.
Development
Times Italic This is the opening passage explaining a little bit about the book and giving it some context. Our idea was to have the book reversable, one half of the book would be written in English and when reversed and turned upside down starting from the other side would be translated into French.
‘P A R I S , the world’s most popular city destination, has plenty of must-see places but make sure you spend at least a day strolling off the beaten path, as this is the only way to discover the real Paris: a lively cosmopolitan but undeniably French city.’ Pictorial captures, through photographic documentation, a real and authentic representation of the French Capital. Looking at all things Parisian, from architecture to signage, the book displays small fragments of the trips to Paris and the visual journey around the City. “...the whole of Paris is a vast university of Art, Literature and Music...it is worth anyone’s while to dally here for years. Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in Everything.”
Brief 15_An exhibition of Paris, collaboration with Lisa Burns Design Development
Test print/mock up
Screen Printing/foiling
Print,
Binding
After printing and cropping the book Lisa and I clamped it with bull dog clips to allow the pages to remain as close as possible, this was fairly important as its such a thick book so having the pages fanned out made it look untidy and slightly unfinished. In terms of binding the book we needed to saddle stitch individual compartments, then the next stage would be to perfect bind the compartments to the spine of the cover.
mock up:
We printed a mock up of our booklet which was essential for this specific book format, firstly to be able to see how the binding would work along the spine, secondly to measure the spines width in order to prepare our digital file ready for being exposed in screen print and thirdly to check whether the reversal cover French/English concept worked and that everything was lined up for the screen printed cover.
We split the booklet into seven sections, three for the french side, three for the english side and the middle divider which changes the way up of the book. We did a simple binding technique, using two stitches as the book is of a small custom sized, three stitches wouldn’t of been necessary.
Screen printing:
Once we had made any necessary amendments to the printed mock up, we exposed our screen. At first we wanted a black cover with white type but whilst choosing stock we decided to try and test out as many colours as possible and try foiling to see if that would work with the design of the book. We decided to go with black thin card, a maroon and a blue to test out the white ink. We were happy with the end result, the way the serif text printed and the contrast of white ink on the dark colours, especially the black works well and we thought having a plain cover would contrast nicely with the content of book being full of photographic images,
Book Binding
Foiling
After screen printing on the three selected colours we moved onto foiling as we had discussed the possibility of this before hand. We thought a bronze or copper would be a nice contrast against the black. As we have only printed two copies of the book we will need to be selective about which cover colour we choose and whether we go for screen printed covers or foiled. We discussed making two variations, one with the screen printed version and another with foiling, but we would have to see whether they then worked as a set.
Brief 15_An exhibition of Paris, collaboration with Lisa Burns
Final products
Printed and bound publication: Pictorial
Final Outcome This is the printed and bound publication, with the screen printed front cover. The book aims to show snapshots of Paris as a city and stay away from the conventional tourist areas. Audience & distribution: Our audience would be people interested in Paris and travelling, this is something that could be targetted at a broad range of people as there is nothing in specific with the book that directly links with one certain age range, sex etc. I came across a bookshop in Paris called OFR Librarie which is a graphic design based publication store selling various high quality zines and books, this is somewhere where I would ideally like the publication to be distributed.
Brief 15_An exhibition of Paris, collaboration with Lisa Burns Extending the brief, photo zine
‘Paris is always a good idea.’ Photographic zine
This is a zine I put together featuring film photography of Paris. This was just a way of bringing all the fikm photos together in a printed format as they had only been used on the web side of the brief.
Brief 15_An exhibition of Paris, collaboration with Lisa Burns
Web element
Web Element This was a way of putting the film photography on a web platform and also makes the project more accessible to the audience. We wanted a simple and clean layout for the photos to be the main focus, occasionally accompanied by famous fitting quotes about the city.