OUGD503 COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE MEETING

Today I met with my collaborator, Mike Ridsdale a photographer from level six. He wanted to collaborate with me on a collection of photo books featuring his work. He hoped to further publish the books down the line as a series. He has three projects that he wants to put into printed publication formats that will somehow link together in a series and be instantly recognisable as being related together. He suggested that this could possibly be done by using some form of header on the cover with similarly typeset information on the front, so that no matter what it says on the front, you can tell they're linked together by the layout of the type. Each book would show a different project but I believe they were all separate photography projects within the same brief, which is why he wants them to be a part of the same publication series.

Some things I suggested to him were that we could experiment with the layout of the images to try and make them respond to the individual briefs. Another thing we could try is using a similar layout throughout to represent the link between the projects. But if he wanted to make them look more unique to their own briefs then using different layouts would be the option. Something else we considered was using possible different paper stocks for each project to once again reflect the brief and take the photographs even further and explore how far they could be pushed.

Something else I suggested was to try using quite an abstract shape of book instead of simple A5 zines which he seems to be quite used too. This would help structure the shape of the layout within books and create a more eye catching publication in comparison to a lot of others out there. Different binding techniques were also discussed and he was curious to learn about which ones would be most suited to the amount of pages used. I discussed with him that perhaps a large amount of pages would best be suited to a perfect bind to give it a professional and clean finish. Although, if it was more of a zine style he was going for, a pamphlet stitch would be better suited to this to give it a more classic neat finish with the stylistic thread which could be any colour of choice, complimenting the publication.

One fo the projects he had shown me was about found imagery and giving them a modern narrative, which meant re taking those old exposures but today. The outcome was very interesting and played with the idea of past and present which could be an interesting theme through out one of the publications.

The main thing to focus on here is most certainly the cover. We need to figure out a way to make some sort of type element to each one that links them easily. It will feature the title of the brief and maybe a small rationale on the front to give it some depth. His name and contact details will be listed on the back for hopefully further communication with others.