OUGD404 - Study Task 06 - What is a book?

A book can be a publication of any size, of a number of pages with written, printed, illustrated or blank pages inside. It can be bound, stabled or spiraled together. The contents of a book can literally be anything. The most common contents of a book however are typically fiction novels or stories, or non-fiction information. These information books can be great sources for research. You could also consider journals to be books, which are more like in depth magazines, particularly in the way that they have been published and produced.

This task will help me understand more about the style of publication and help me decide what style of publication I would want to produce. A book is a kind of publication and there are an even bigger variety of publications out there, including books, journals and magazines. But other styles of publications can be leaflets, font samples or newspaper.

A book is often more in depth than most publications and there is a variety of ways that these books can be printed and bound. Here is an example of books that interest me in their use of style and tone of voice that consist of journals and bound books. They vary in content from lifestyle to design and photography.

FANTASTIC MAN

This is the first journal that interests me. It contains interviews with actors and musicians and people who are considered to have ‘style’ this journal has been printed for 10 years and is on its 22^nd print.

Following from the magazine is a hardback, bound book with features of the magazine. It contains a collection of ‘fantastic men’ in a cult style bible.

This style of journal is clean and simple and minimalist but still holds an abundance of style and flavor.

THE GENTLEWOMAN

A further reading from the fantastic man is The Gentlewoman, marketed towards a female audience. On its 12^th edition this journal celebrates modern women and their taste in style and fashion. It is in a way the female version of The Fantastic Man. It also holds a consistent and clean style.

BLEU

Bleu is an 80 paged book that captures the reimagining of a UFO incident in the 1980’s it contains images of Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk. The book is minimalist in style communicating a similar tone of voice to that of the Fantastic Man. It is effective in drawing in an audience by excluding a title on the cover. Instead there is a simple, minimalist design that intrigues the potential reader.

SO IT GOES

So It Goes is a journal similar to the Fantastic Man and contains the ‘voices’ of actors, directors, artists and other creatives. This publication's style is also clean and crisp and communicates the same tone of voice that the Fantastic Man and The Gentlewoman. It manipulates the ground figure, using a large amount of ground over figure giving it a clean polished finish. This is how the publication successfully communicates a sophisticated style.