Thinking About Presentation and Layout
April 19, 2020I am planning to make a photbook for the final presentation of my work, and so I have been thinking about layouts and different ways of presenting the work in book format. The presentation of Yoshikatsu Fujii’s incredibly beautiful book, “Hiroshima Graph - Rabbits Abandon Their Children” was suggested to me as a reference for ideas. I was actually already familiar with this work, and can’t believe I did not think of is as a source of inspiration earlier in my visual research. The book has a lot of different layouts and fold outs, as well as smaller pages and mini books stuck in various parts of the main publication. I found a video (1) that shows just how detailed the layouts are…
I am going to include screenshots from my phone of conversations that Shinya and I have had, and it was suggested that I could embed these into the main pages as small, mini pages that occasionally appear.
I really like that idea, as that is kind of how sms messages operate, they ‘pop up’ or ‘ping’ at you randomly throughout the day.
Below is a screenshot of a page in Fujii’s book that illustrates what I am talking about. (The grey image is a smaller set of pages.)
I was also recently introduces to Out Of Place Books, which publish beautiful A5 books with very slick layouts. I think I will use some of their layouts as starting points for my own book. I want to keep consistency and flow throughout the book, so I think it is important to choose only a few key layouts, and retain a sense of cohesion. Below are some simple but effective layouts that I saw on Out Of Place Books’ website.
(1) Reminders Photography Stronghold, 2018, YOSHIKATSU FUJII’S ARTIST BOOK “HIROSHIMA GRAPH – RABBITS ABANDON THEIR CHILDREN” PRE-ORDER AVAILABLE NOW, video, viewed 19 April 2020, <https://vimeo.com/235484339>
(2) Fujii, Y 2017, Hiroshima Graph: Rabbits Abandon Their Children, Fuji / Reminders, Tokyo
(3) Pilsbury, A 2019, Spark, Out of Place Books, UK
(4) Graham, B 2018, Gold, Out of Place Books, UK
(5) Archer, G 2017, IS, Out of Place Books, UK
(6) Banks-Brumby, A 2019, Peacocks Cry, Out of Place Books, UK
(7) Archer, G 2019, Mons Calpe, Out of Place Books, UK