Wednesday 21 May 2014

Brief 5 // Notebooks // Evaluation

Brief 05: Notebooks
Notebooks set out to be research project in which I would further my knowledge on book binding methods and techniques. As a design area that is becoming more relevant to my practice I wanted to research further into the subject and get a better understanding of the methods and techniques.

As a research project I was looking forward into taking time out to do a full body of research. I found this really interesting and as a subject that I am interested in, it kept me engaged throughout the research process. It was great to learn more about the subject and actually get an understanding of the techniques and methods. Reading about the history of bookbinding made me realise that it is a very traditional technique and one that it nowadays being taken over my machinery, unless you want the more hand crafted style and therefor use a traditional bookbinder. It is evident that bookbinding is still relevant within today’s industry and you see a lot of bespoke publishing houses and independent magazines and publications making use of these.

Collating the research and designing a fact file which visually displayed the research was a good way to learn the actual facts and read through the information as it was placed within the document. This is very useful for the target audience and I designed it to a simple layout, so that the user could easily read it and understand the information. I think that having a product like this is always great when learning a new subject, which I believe this will help.

The project came into its own when I used the research and put it into practice. This was the main idea of the project, to research and teach myself about different methods and then put these into practice, showing that I have understood the research that I carried out. It was evident through doing this that the research had made an effect on me, as it was easy to produce the 10 notebooks, which all used a different binding technique. This was the strongest element of the brief and showed my craftsmanship skills, which were also improved upon during the project.

Overall I feel as though the research element of this brief has give me a greater understand of bookbinding, which I will be able to use in future brief and within my practice in general. The knowledge I have learnt is invaluable and I did actually enjoy doing the research for this brief. The strongest element is by far the series of notebooks, I am really pleased with the results of each one of them, they are all produced to a high standard and can all be used as a physical notebook. This has shown how to effectively put theory into practice and it is a great talking point when explaining the brief. If I had more time and more resources I would of liked to expand the range of notebooks and use different stocks and materials to create more bespoke notebooks that show the qualities of the binding methods and print in general.

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