This series, my senior thesis at OCAD University, is a book lover’s exploration of how characteristics of digital texts translate to print. The resulting objects, blatantly impractical as they are, are both a concession to the robust capabilities of digital technologies that print cannot rival, and a celebration of print’s resilience and tactile charm nonetheless.
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From the contrasting spine to the roundel illustrations to the use of paper marbling, this series was heavily inspired by the traditional. As a commentary on the book itself, it was crucial to reference the book in its archetypal form.
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The project first began to take shape through a series of illustrations depicting how I envisioned various characteristics of digital texts would adapt to the printed page.
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Searchable Edition: Excel in your wizarding studies with this entirely indexed volume, which allows you to search any word in the text. It’s just like magic. Only a little slower. And slightly more unwieldy.
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Every book has its own roundel illustration, which appears on the spine and marks the beginning of each new chapter.
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The searchable book's index, over 125 pages long and containing every single word in the text, makes up more than a third of the book's pages.
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Paperless: An early concept
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Concept illustration
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Shareable Edition: Carbon transfer paper and perforated pages enable the proliferation of the book’s message, but animals beware—each copy becomes more distorted than the last.
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Each page occurs three times, on transfer paper with generous margins so that the text and the reader's notes can be shared with multiple people.
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Every page is perforated for easy removal and distribution to others.
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1,000 Books Wherever You Go: An early concept
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Concept illustration
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Portable Edition: Just as Peter will never grow up, this book is so small as to never be read.
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The portable edition, measuring 1.25 x 1.75" and set in 2pt. type is just that—portable. Perhaps not so legible.
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Automatic Updates: An early concept
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Concept illustration
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Infinite Scroll Edition: If you don't quite understand the concept of Absurdism yet, it's likely that 69 accordion pages falling into your lap will help.
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The entire book is bound accordion-style using paper hinges to create a continuous (if unwieldy) reading experience devoid of page turns.
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Concept illustration
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Skimmable Edition: One of literature’s most digressionary narrators finally cuts straight to the action. As it turns out, there is very little.
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The text of the book is divided into two separate channels: the big, bold type contains only the action and dialogue of the story, allowing the events to be easily skimmed, while the rest is treated below as a footnote.
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As part of the exploration of print's tactile appeal, the creation of the series involved manual, traditional process at every stage, from design through printing through binding. Each title began as a hand drawn rough which was then scanned and refined in Illustrator.
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The patterns forming the backgrounds for the book covers were created using the centuries-old technique of paper marbling.
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Colours are floated on the surface of a liquid base, and layered on top of one another.
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The inks are then manipulated using a combination of stylus and rake or comb instruments to create designs before the paper is placed on top to transfer the pattern to its surface.
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Once settled on the nonpareil pattern, several versions were made for each cover, and the best were chosen for use, scanned, and inkjet printed.
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To finish the covers and spines, the typography and lettering were screen printed to achieve a luxurious, metallic effect. As only my second time screen printing, and my first printing type, the process involved some serious trial and error (left).
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The five books required four different binding techniques, which were all done by hand. From left: perfect binding the portable book, combination perfect binding and stab stitching the shareable book, and accordion binding the infinite scrolling book.
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The searchable book and skimmable book both used a traditional casebinding stitch.