I visited the Bound Art Book Fair in Manchester this weekend to extend my knowledge on the production of art books and publications. I saw so many books and took in so much information that it was difficult to see everything but there were a small handful that stood out to others in relation to my brief specifically.
One of my favourite covers was this one here. The reason I enjoy this is because at a first glance it seems like a plain cover, but when shined in the light you can see that the whole cover is embossed with the title of the publication. This is quite similar to how I’d imagine my cover to look in the production side of its elements.
Another book I found interesting was this one titled ‘Form’. I really admired the chose of binding used here as it is simply an elastic band with loose sheets within. There could be two ways or reading this. One would be to remove the band and look at the pages individually and perhaps putting them back in a different order for the next person creating a new narrative. Another could be to just lift the corners up and peak inside each page, not receiving the whole image but having a slight preview of sorts. This isn’t the kind of binding that I’m interested in for this brief but it has showed me there are more non-traditional ways of binding that could be used for a specific concept instead of just a staple bind.
A third book I found quite useful was this one. The reason I was so fond of it was because the choice of paper stock for the cover was an exact replica of the concept within. The book is called ‘Rose of the Desert’ and is a travellers photo journal of her time at a festival in the Middle East I believe. Due to the book being about a desert and having photos of the desert, the designer has chosen to use this really rough sand paper like stock for the cover. This gives the whole aesthetic of the book a real thoughtful finish on the production side of things.
Finally I wanted to slightly touch upon a concept I found which was quite similar to mine. This was a photo book taken by a handful of photographers with the context of ‘religion’ in mind. The photos show really interesting angles on what is being shown here in a way I may not have originally thought about. I’d like to take this mentality on board when I collect my content.
The rest of the images are other publications I found interesting whilst at the fair.
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