Task
Global: Objective
Think about the influence of books globally. Can you think of some seminal works that have informed worldwide politics, religion and science? Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, The Bible, The Koran… when we appreciate the breadth and influence of these works we begin to appreciate the extent of a book’s potential impact. Books carry and communicate ideas; powerful messages can be contained within seemingly innocuous bound paper pages.
In your learning log, create a short list of books, with accompanying images, which you believe to be important in a global context. These may be scientific, historical, political, geographic, fictional, poetic or religious texts – think of the impact of books as broadly and generally as you can. Write a sentence or two for each book explaining the reasons behind your choice. Remember to be objective in this part of the exercise – think about the global significance of your chosen books rather than your own personal response to them.
Books carry and communicate powerful messages. Whether or not books and the ideas in them are of global influence depends on:
- Whether the books are actually published
- How many people have access to the books – numbers sold or disseminated
- Whether or not those people are receptive to the ideas – do they understand them, do they agree or disagree enough to be influenced
- Are those people able to act and/or pass on the ideas.
Some books eg bomb making instructions for the 9/11 bombers may actually be influential through just targeting a small number of very powerful people or small sects determined to act. Some scientific books have also been read by a very few scientists but what they do with that knowledge has had huge impacts.
Other books may be influential because certain ideas strike a chord with many people. So the ideas spread even if most people have not even read the book or can understand it. The Arabic Koran and Latin Bible might come into that category. Also some political texts.
Influence may also be good or disastrous eg Mein Kampf had a disastrous mpact on many people who had not read the book. But nowadays as very many more people can read and write, and book production is much cheaper, this means books can reach very many more people. At the same time, the ready availability of very many books of different types means that any one book may have less overall impact in itself.
A Google search on ‘influential books’ brings up a number of lists – but these are very Euro/Western centric:
Personal: Subjective
Now consider the importance of books to you on a personal or subjective level. Think back to the earliest books you came across as a child, through your teenage years and early adulthood to where you are now. There may be half a dozen books which stick in your memory or are important to you in some way. There may be many more than that. It may be an early reading book, a particular image or short rhyme which helped you recognise letterforms. It may be the distressed metallic silver cover of a Salinger novel you read as a teenager, or the book you bought on impulse after work one day, seduced by the tactile quality of the cover.
In your learning log, use photographs and annotation to create another illustrated list documenting the books that are important to you, for whatever reason. Did any of these books appear on your earlier list?
Influential books subjective
None of the books that have influenced me most appear on the ‘objective’ list. This is possibly for a number of reasons:
- The criteria for choice on the ‘objective’ list are not completely clear, and in the absence of statistical research on rigorous criteria, choices are inherently subjective. In particular, the objective lists are somewhat Western-biased and also in terms of intellectual class.
- I myself have tended to be more interested in alternative ways of thinking
- My list focuses on earlier influences before I had read so many books it would be difficult to choose. For example I read The Second Sex after The Female Eunuch, so it was not so groundbreaking for me.
TASK
Look carefully at four or five books from different publishing genres. Choose genres that we haven’t talked about yet (i.e. avoid children’s books). For example, you might look at a cookery book, a biography of a sports personality, a travel guide, a work of historical fiction, a teenage film tie-in like Twilight, this course guide – the choice is yours.
Think about how each book’s form reflects its function. The front cover is an obvious starting point (and the subject of the next project) but try to look more broadly than this. Think about things like:
- Page extent, paper quality, typeface, the weight of the book, imagery.
- Is the book illustrated with photographs, reproduced images or drawings?
- Are these concentrated in one or two places or distributed throughout the book?
- What about front matter and end matter? Historical novels like Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall may have family trees and/or a list of characters as part of the front matter. A scholarly biography will usually have many pages of end-notes and references.
Make notes in your learning log about how each book designer has reflected the genre and function of your chosen books in their final design.
Below are photos of the pages and comments from my original logbook (now in Sketchlog 1: Books)
Task
If you are able to, spend some time in a bookshop. Stand at the ‘Bestsellers’ section and spend time visually absorbing the covers, before choosing several books to look at in more detail. Draw thumbnail sketches and make notes in your learning log of the books that capture your attention.
If you have time, apply the same approach in different sections of the store. List the sections you cover – travel, fiction, biography, etc. Focus on covers you are drawn to and document these. Try to work out why you are drawn to them. What it is about the design that captures you? What sort of imagery, if any, is used on the cover? How does the text relate to the image? What atmosphere or style does the cover evoke?
Do you notice any common features between books of a particular genre in terms of cover design? For example, is there a ‘formula’ for historical crime novel covers?
Get used to making small drawings in public places. You may feel self-conscious at first, but you should feel more relaxed with practice. You may want to do this exercise in several short sessions over a period of time rather than attempting it all in one go.
Development
Choose three books to compare, from three different genres – for example, chick-lit, DIY, crime thriller. Ensure the cover designs are quite different – this will give you greater scope to compare and contrast the designs effectively.
Reflect
As you study these covers and document the designs, reflect on the audience for these books. Is there a target audience in terms of gender, culture or age? How does this make itself apparent in the cover designs? Define what is different about the three approaches, with regard to typeface, imagery and colour. Is there anything formulaic about the way any of your chosen covers are designed? Try to analyse this.
Present
Document your findings in your learning log.
For this project I chose the different departments in Waterstone’s in Cambridge, visiting and photographing on a couple of weekends around some reflections over coffee in their comfortable cafe.
Below are photos of logbook pages now in Sketchlog 1: Books.
Business section
Politics section
Travel section
Approaches to design
See also Children’s Books
