Documenting Artists' Books

After a recent embarrassment of handing out a business card to a friend and gently being asked why my website was almost empty, I resolved to spend some time bringing it up to scratch (i.e. adding at least some coherent content to it!).

Original - Cover

Original - Interior

Starting the process I soon remembered why I had given up months before. Building a website and adding content in a straightforward, appealing way is quite a challenge and central to that challenge is taking clear documentation. I overcame the problem in quite a straight forward way, so I wanted to talk about it here. I'll use the example of an artwork called 'Between the Lines'.

The two original photos (above) were taken with my smartphone from the slightly battered proof copy that arrived from the printer. It was hasty because I wanted to get the photos on my website in time for them going on sale at the Whitechapel Book Fair. Shamefully I've been using those photos ever since!

One simple way of establishing how I wanted the new documentation to look was by addressing what I didn't like about the old photographs:

• Both of my original images were cropped and didn't give a true impression of the cover design or the page layout. I had originally taken the photos like this in an attempt to make them look visually interesting and (particularly regarding the cover) to hide the roughness of the book itself. As the book is merely documentation, I realised that clarity was more important than visual interest, so documented the cover and pages in their entirety and from above.
• Both images are different sizes (one square, the other rectangular), so they looked uneven next to each other. The simple solution to this was to choose a standard size - making them square meant that I didn't have to remember what ratio I had picked.
• Using my smart phone camera meant that the colours were very uneven. The simple solution to this was to use a better camera.
• The background didn't match other documentation, so I opted to pick a particular shade and use that across all my documentation.

Strange how these things sound so simple, but had never really occurred to me before. So I set up a little studio in my front room and took some photos with my compact camera.

Using this set-up the only two elements that I needed to control were the background and quality of the image. These could be done together in Photoshop. All I had to do was to separate the book and the background and work on them separately.

For the book element I improved the contrast and changed the colours slightly to match the original. For the background I increased the contrast so that the paper textures of the background disappeared, but the shadow stayed. I then filled the background with a specific shade of the grey that provided a contrast. Noting down the details of the shade of grey were important, as I then used the same shade on all subsequent documentation. The finished images are here:

New - Cover

New - Interior

Below these are other books that I documented using the same technique - I hope it gives you an idea of how straight forward the process can be.

Mrs Dalloway Variations

Mrs Dalloway Variations

[Chris]

Cannons of Page Construction

Book designer, typographer, teacher and writer Jan Tschichold popularised the idea of Cannons of page Construction in the mid to late twentieth century, based on the work of J. A. van de Graaf, Raúl M. Rosarivo, Hans Kayser, and others. These ways of structuring the page are very interesting although very rigid. I wonder if they have a place within modern design or are they seen as bit old fashioned and stifle creativity. 

“Though largely forgotten today, methods and rules upon which it is impossible to improve have been developed for centuries. To produce perfect books these rules have to be brought to life and applied.” Tschichold 1.

Jan Tschichold, wrote three works concerning typography; Die neue Typographie (1927), The Proportion of the Book (1955) and The Form of the Book (A collection of essays written between 1937 and 1975 that discusses all elements influencing classical book design.) For many years, he worked for Penguin Books where he laid the foundation for the design of their paperbacks.

Van de Graaf Cannon

He measured a number of old books and manuscripts and discovered a number of different systems. One discovered by J. A Van de Graaf and written about in his book, Nieuwe berekening voor de vormgeving (1946). Van de Graaf's canon works with any page size and allows the text body to be placed within a pleasing and functional part of the page. The resulting inside margin is one-half of the outside margin, and proportions 2:3:4:6 (inner:top:outer:bottom). The position of the text in this way is not only aesthetically pleasing but has a practical function, in giving space to read and hold the book and giving enough space within the page for printing. 

Golden Cannon

Tschichold's "golden canon of page construction" combined with Rosarivo's construction by division of the page into ninths. These two constructions rely on the 2:3 page ratio to give a type area height equal to page width as demonstrated by the circle, and result in margin proportions 2:3:4:6. 

Raúl Rosarivo analyzed Renaissance books with the help of a drafting compass and a ruler and concluded in his Divina proporción tipográfica ("Typographical Divine Proportion", first published in 1947) that Gutenberg, Peter Schöffer, Nicolaus Jenson and others had applied the golden canon of page construction in their works.

According to Rosarivo, his work and assertion that Gutenberg used the "golden number" 2:3, or "secret number" as he called it, to establish the harmonic relationships between the diverse parts of a work, was analyzed by experts at the Gutenberg Museum and re-published in the Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, its official magazine. 

‘the height of the type area equals the width of the page: using a page proportion of 2:3, a condition for this canon, we get one-ninth of the paper width for the inner margin, two-ninths for the outer or fore-edge margin, one-ninth of the paper height for the top, and two-ninths for the bottom margin. Type area and paper size are of equal proportions. ... What I uncovered as the canon of the manuscript writers, Raul Rosarivo proved to have been Gutenberg's canon as well. He finds the size and position of the type area by dividing the page diagonal into ninths’ Tschichold 2.

Golden Section

Building on Rosarivo's work, Jan Tschichold and Richard Hendel asserts that the page proportion of the golden section (21:34) has been used in book design, in manuscripts, and incunabula, mostly in those produced between 1550 and 1770. Hendel writes that since Gutenberg's time, books have been most often printed in an upright position, that conform loosely, if not precisely, to the golden ratio.

These page proportions based on the golden section or golden ratio, are usually described through its convergents such as 2:3, 5:8, and 21:34.


This video nicely demonstrates building up the structure of the page:

Canons of Page Construction from Aaron Zalonis on Vimeo.

[George]

References:
1. As cited in Hendel, Richard. On Book Design, p.7
2. Tschichold , The Form of the Book p.45
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canons_of_page_construction
https://vimeo.com/57018050
http://www.bachgarde.com/html/works/gridsystem.html
http://www.metricphilatelist.net/TowsonU/publications/Stanley-Max_GoldenCanon-article.pdf

Images:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canons_of_page_construction
https://vimeo.com/57018050

The Complete Virginia Woolf - an eBook as a labour of love

Although I’ve changed ebook-readers a few times over the years, one book that has remained ‘constantly’ on my virtual shelf is the Complete Works of Virginia Woolf. It’s a beautiful volume, which seems to have been a real labour of love for the maker. I hesitated when I wrote the word ‘constant’, because as you’ll see the book as evolved a lot over the years.

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf - book cover. Image source: Mobileread.

The Complete Works is an ebook created by the user Pynch on the ebook site Mobileread. As background Mobileread is an online community where users format and upload books that are in the public domain. In this case Pynch compiled the complete works of Virginia Woolf in one volume and uploaded it in 2012. Since then the volume has undergone 15 revisions (errors have been corrected, formatting conventions smoothed out and huge volumes of new material added).

When we think of books as a labour of love, I suspect ebooks aren’t the first things that spring to mind, perhaps a beautifully bound manuscript might be more apt, or something personalised in some way, or an example of excellent design. Ebooks have more of a cold, utilitarian connotation - they are after all devoid of so many elements we fetishise in paper books (the smell, the touch, the familiarity etc.)

Picture of Dorian Gray Interior

The Picture of Dorian Gray Cover

Book-binder Mark Cockram's beautiful books have been exhibited widely and often use mixed materials, striking end pages and interventions to the edges and interiors, enclosing and reframing an existing novel, to draw out certain plot points or create a certain tactility in the hands. (The images here show Cockram's bold rebinding of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray).

The Complete Virginia Woolf has a cover that breaks from traditional convention (its restrained design and subdued colours compliment the text, without being showy or eye-catching) and uses Vanessa Bell's original woodcut cover designs to mark each individual work that comprises the collection. Instead of being merely a 9,500 page book, the use of Bell's imagery nicely packages the works, differentiating them from one another. Connecting Virginia's writing with the images that her sister conceived to accompany them, gives history to the collection, tying it to its original production.

Mrs. Dalloway section of the Complete Works.

Original Hogarth Press cover design by Vanessa Bell

Graham Rawle is a fascinating artist whose books often layer found imagery to build up a new story or give a certain depth or feeling to an existing one. The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf is a work in constant revision and as such also gains a certain gravity the more texts are added, or the further existing texts are revised or the design improved upon.

Pages from Rawle's Woman's World, 2005

Pages from Rawle's edition of The Wizard of Oz, 2008

Were this edition released by a major publisher we might remark what an achievement to bring such diverse material together, but to say the book is down to the labour of one individual means so much more. Our having evidence of the constant addition and improvement makes this all the more impressive, as it reminds us of the labour involved; with edition after edition we're made aware of the hands of the maker.

Penguin's Great Ideas series (released in 2004 and designed by David Pearson) is a excellent example of simple design and attention to detail that enhances a book, making it a pleasure to read. The designer's thoughtful and pared down aesthetic and attention to detail (such as the use of embossing and mixing type faces) harks back to both the simple Penguin covers of yesteryear and old fashioned printing techniques (such as letterpress).

Penguin Great Ideas Vol. 1 - spines

Penguin Great Ideas Vol. 1 - cover

One of the pleasures of The Complete Works is the crispness of design - typographic conventions are shared across the 30+ volumes that make up the collection and design is unified right across the 9,500 pages. In a world where even the big publishers can't always get formatting consistent (in a hard-back edition of Mrs. Dalloway I own the text is printed differently on alternate pages, making for a jarring experience and the references that accompany the text contain obvious errors), the ease of reading The Complete Works is refreshing.

As with many labours of love, the work has flaws (as each revision of the document testifies) but to say that it has been been created by one person, spurred on by helpful comments and encouragement, makes it all the more personal. Oh, and did I mention that in a bout of productive-procrastination I decided the Complete Letters of Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey  needed transcribing? You'll find it in this volume!

Why not pop along to Mobileread and get your copy now? Remember to keep checking back for revisions.

[Chris]

→ introducing physicians' almanac binding

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

In the world of medieval English bookmaking, 15th century saw emergence of a physician's folded almanac. The book, which was produced to be carried around; where each page expanded individually to allow the medical practitioner access essential information on stars, saints and signs of Zodiac.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

Folded almanac belongs to the late medieval period, when astrology, science and magic coexisted in medicine. Almanacs were utilitarian tools, which helped physicians check the alignments of starts before making a diagnosis or commencing a treatment. They contained calendar (with saints' days), charts as well as diagram of Zodiac Man, which indicated the parts of the body as they were ruled by the signs of Zodiac.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

The almanacs must have been abundant in the 15th century. By the end of the 1500s, physicians across Europe were required by law to calculate the position of the moon before carrying out complicated medical procedures, such as surgery or bleeding(2).

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

By the end of the 1500s, physicians across Europe were required by law to calculate the position of the moon before carrying out complicated medical procedures, such as surgery or bleeding. - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/medicine-diagnosis-and-treatment-in-the-middle-ages#sthash.1o8erWVQ.dpuf

The almanacs had a "best before" date - the astronomical and astrological data was only calculated for a period of about ten years. A physician could only safely consult the manuscript during those years, after which he would need an updated version of the calculations (4).  It is thought(4), that this is the reason why so few of them survived to this day.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

By the end of the 1500s, physicians across Europe were required by law to calculate the position of the moon before carrying out complicated medical procedures, such as surgery or bleeding. - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/medicine-diagnosis-and-treatment-in-the-middle-ages#sthash.1o8erWVQ.dpuf

Almanacs - like contemporary books - were portable objects: they were produced to be carried around, often hung on the belt. They were built out of individual sheets of parchment, which were folded and sewn together to create a fan-like structure that allowed each leaf to be unfolded individually(1) - not unlike maps. Almanacs’ practical function suggests that they were both ephemeral – readily discarded and replaced – and relatively inexpensive to produce with (often) crude illustrations(3). The more lavishly decorated ones (as the one from Wellcome Library shown here), suggest that their ownership extended to the wealthier patrons, who might have not necessarily practiced medicine.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

English folding almanac in Latin.  MS.8932. Wellcome Library, 2014.

As seen from the images, the structure is similar to the map fold: the book is contained in a small case, but each page can be expanded into the space well beyond the size of the book. My brief online research suggests, that there are a few variants of the fold, including a type of concerina. A wonderful blog post by Teffania shows her attempts to recreate the almanac structure.

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Teffania's Stuff

Sources:

1 Strådal, Sara Öberg (2016), Medieval Medical Diagrams: Meanings, Audiences and Functions. In Hectoren International: A Journal of Medical Humanities. http://www.hektoeninternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=154:medieval-medical-diagrams-meanings-audiences-and-functions&catid=93&Itemid=435

2 Bovey, Alixe. Medicine, Diagnosis and Treatment in the Middle Ages. In British Library http://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/medicine-diagnosis-and-treatment-in-the-middle-ages

3 Brenner, Elma. The Enigma of the Medieval Almanac. In Welcome Library. http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2014/01/the-enigma-of-the-medieval-almanac/

4 Albright, Adrienne. Art and Science 4 – Celestial Bodies: Astrological Medicine in a Folding Almanac. In Before the Art. http://beforetheart.com/2013/07/18/art-and-science-4-celestial-bodies-astrological-medicine-in-a-folding-almanac/






Egidija

the typewriter

As part of our Gutter project we used a typewriter. The reason for us, was that it is the most transportable way of printing on site without having to have a computer and a printer.  It doesn't need electricity or take up a lot of room, so fits into our project quite nicely, allowing us to print a publication during the duration of the fair.

Photo: Pauline Lamont-Fisher

So I'm going to explore a few creative uses of the typewriter in various forms. 

Instructions for the use of the Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter

Firstly this manual for the use of an Olivetti typewriter from the 50's. Though not intended as a piece of art it is beautifully designed and reads like a piece of concrete poetry. It sums up the modern differences in keyboard design which enthralled so many people at the fair. The 'experience' of the typewriter, the noise, the extra pressure you put on the keys added an interesting layer to the event. Also what I liked was that the backspace key pointed in the direction the carriage moved and not in the direction it now points on a modern keyboard. I wonder when this change in direction appeared?

Instructions for the use of the Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter

Carl Andre - then I pulled his gun and I, 1975

Carl Andre - PLAN (Yucatan), 1972

Carl Andre

I couldn't look at the typewriter without looking at concrete poetry which seems to form a big part of its creative use, like these typewriter drawings and poems by Carl Andre. It did strike me while using the typewriter the other weekend, that there is something quite freeing about an analogue way of working. If you don't mind not having perfectly straight lines of text, the typewriter works more like a drawing with a slightly less than precise form of mark making. 

Ed Ruscha - Royal Road Test 1967

While doing this typewriter research I came across this fun book by Ed Ruscha that I wasn't aware of. Some might be repulsed by it but it fits into this post on the creative use of a typewriter quite nicely. 

This artists' book documents the destruction of a Royal (Model 'X') typewriter that was thrown from a car travelling at 90 m.p.h. The book being an interpretation of Jack Kerouac’s 1959 novel, On the Road. Various parts of the typewriter that were scattered far and wide were documented along with the remaining body of the typewriter itself and the artist inspecting it. 

I'll leave you with this: 'The Typewriter' a piece of classical music from the 50's written by Leroy Anderson. Reminding us that the typewriter can not only be used to draw with, record text and be thrown out of a speeding car, but can also be used to make music. Enjoy!

[George]

GUEST POST: From Books to Printed Matter (A brief history of Highchair Editions by Edward Newton)

With the recent boom in self and small scale independent publishing, the book has, in many ways, taken centre stage in the world of photography. Everyone wants to publish a book! I, of course, was no different when I started Highchair Editions in 2011. It was set up with my brother as a self publishing imprint for our personal self initiated projects.

From the outset we made in our minds a clear distinction that we were making artist books rather than large volume trade editions.  There were a number of reasons that led us to print small editions. Firstly it was financial, followed very closely by what we felt was something of a creative restriction of producing something in volume as well as the unknown landscape of distribution and audience. As things began we were blind to many of the nuts and bolts of the process, we just wanted to print something.

Printing
At the start we were also led by the choice of printing technique. Inkjet printing for some is still something of a dirty word. Very few people seem to want to make direct reference to it. For us the process allowed us to find our book making feet so to speak in the fact that it offered us complete in house control over the production from making the early dummies to the finished publication. It also allowed us the opportunity, through a lot of trial and error, to print on a huge number of different non inkjet specific paper stocks. By doing so we were able to eliminate a huge number of options and discover a few real surprises.

Our first happy accident was to print on sugar paper, also known as construction paper and used today mainly in primary school art classes.  Its rough surface has a beautiful tactile quality which really lent itself to the work we were printing.  It’s rough but has stability and at 140gsm meant we could book stitch bind it and more significantly it printed well, holding black particularly well.

On the other end of the paper scale was a GF Smith paper stock Accent smooth, an off-white ‘smart’ paper with a significantly smoother surface than we had used before. It offered elegance in both presentation and print for a series of abstract, tonally subtle images.

We continued to experiment with paper options and moved towards using coloured stocks, albeit in shades of light brown, culminating in ‘The Light Was Rust’. This particular publication features work made in the Italian city of Palermo and uses a light straw coloured stock in two weights for cover and bulk. The shade and texture of the paper lend themselves to the tone and texture of the city itself, and, much like the place itself was an attempt to marry certain elegance with an informality and roughness.

Design
My attitude to design and what constitutes a book has changed quite significantly in the five years of Highchair Editions, in fact we may now consider our productions as printed matter rather than books! A small but significant shift in attitude and approach has led to a variety of formats being produced, the main driving force being the aim to design specifically around the work and not have a one size fits all approach. We have always wanted to start from scratch each time we begin a project, and, in some ways react against the last one. With ‘This time next year’ we used a salvaged wall paper for the front cover, it was a book made up primarily of domestic scenes from around the house so the material lent itself towards feelings of the home. However it was also very pretty and as a reaction led us to make ‘Trampolines and Bouncy’ castles, an ugly book made up of ugly images!


 

More recently, any experimentation has been in format as much as with materials. ‘nothing at the moment’ is something of a follow up to the earlier mentioned This time next year’ and continues to explore the home and domestic scenes. The finished publication is part portfolio, part book, and is made simply of seven sheets folded and then housed in a small band, it is content driven, 14 photographs, no text.

It was stripping back the process to the bare bones, thinking about what the key components are and very much an attitude of less is more, an idea that culminated with ‘Unknown’. 


 

As something of an antidote to the white space of ‘nothing at the moment’ and ‘unknown’ we made ‘FORZA’.  The work, made in the Italian city of Genoa, covers every surface of the publication, a publication that functions as part concertina book and part poster. It’s loosely bound with elastic to fold out to reveal a larger image and can be read as individual pictures or a complete set. The format is simply two sheets of paper that fold down, with the smaller sheet functioning as a cover of sorts. It was made with the specific city in mind, in that it is compact with little space but if you begin to look it will reveal itself to you.

So as we continue to develop the practice of self publishing many of our original ideas and aims remain, in fact, very little has changed in terms of attitude and intention, this despite some changes in the landscape as a whole.  We’ll continue to pursue our own ideas and focus on image based content presented in the most suitable and hopefully interesting way as possible.












Edward Newton
(Highchair Editions)