Some progress. Last week at the Book Works studio we chose papers for the pages, cover and slipcase, looked at examples of debossing and made some decisions about the colour of the text. And agreed an alarmingly fine deadline for all the artwork to arrive at the studio. June 6th.
Today it’s too sunny to sit at my computer setting up Photoshop templates (it should probably be Illustrator but I haven’t time to learn the software) so I’m out in the garden handling my olololo mockups and struggling with instructions. Before my laptop battery runs out I thought I’d note down my thoughts.
I need to settle on some kind of instructions for how to use the book.
I’ve tried writing straightforward instructions in words but they make the actions sound obvious and cumbersome, like I’m explaining the punchline of a joke. As the title isn’t strictly language (you can read ‘olololo’ as a word or look at it as a sequence of shapes) I’d like to keep the whole book free of language altogether if it’s possible. It’s also for this reason that I’m printing the bibliographical information on the slipcase rather than in the book itself.
We talked about omitting instructions from the book altogether but including a QR code linking to an online video that shows the book in use. We decided against it. No doubt QR codes will be out of date in a couple of years – they’re certainly ubertrendy today – and more immediately it would spread the book out past the edges of its pages. I don’t want a separate online annexe, I’d rather have the book self-contained.
Diagrams are another option. Quite abstract arrows and circles are a possibility because they would reference the abstract-ish title and slots. I’ve been looking at systems of choreographic notation ever since I went to a dance notation conference at Coventry University earlier this year, and some of these graphical symbols appeal. Likewise some of the symbols associated with various attempts to write down sign languages on paper. But all of these are able to appear abstract and simple because they’re refined systems of communication that need learning in their own right. I want the instructions self-contained without introducing a new diagrammatic language into an already diagrammatic book.
That’s the current dilemma. Now. Too much sun.
