APPLICATE Post 1

I wanted to make a post, just to let everyone know where Ive been with my book (as my proposal stated) and where I'm now headed with it. 

Basically my proposal said I wanted to catogorise and colect 100 Images of paint containers and present in a book as something similar to a collection or catalogue of paint containers.

When presenting my book in the  first crit (All complications aside,)  My feedback was helpful as people said the book needed more of  narrative or maybe a story to give the book itsself more of a character and more of an interest. I translated this as adding Listings to the paint images such as where i got them, what type of paint it is, how much it costs, etc. So in my produced mock up I included these in rough form.

So that was the basic layout of my Mock up for the book. I Didnt particiularly like the layout of the A5 page sizes and 32 page limit given, as it made laying out the images difficult and made te page look cumbersome and botched. I figured out for my Images to fit this spec in the book, they would have to conform to a rule, the rule was;

• 1 Image on the first page (Title page)
• 3 Images on every page up to the double page spread (D.P.S)
• 6Images per page on the D.P.S
• 3 Images up to the "Miscellanious Containers" section
• 4 Images on the first page of Misc.
• 2 Images on the back page.

That Rule fit 100 Images accross 32 A5 Pages (16 A4 Leaves). 

So, coming up to the second brief of the project I had thought the book needed a more interesting and unique layout to fit with its subject matter. I thought that basing the books bind on a swatch booklet would be fitting, so began looking into that.

Swatch Booklets are either Ring bound.(Short edge Bind) or bound via a bolt in the top corner, so the book opens out in a hand- fan motion. I'm going to post another entry looking into binding methods further sometime soon.

Anyway, crit day arrived, and after talking to the group and Jo, It became apparant that this idea of catalogging paint containers really was'nt working for me, not due to lack of anything or lazyness, just down to the pure fact that if a book does'nt interest its author, how is it going to captivate an audience. It also became clear that I didnt really have a target audience for this book to appeal to, and if there was an audience there, it was a very specialist one.

So with some deliberation with the crit group, it was clear my imaged of the aerosol cans were working well aesthetically and with a narration, but not neccessarily the one i had used. So The idea was put forward to focus on the just spray cans instead of the "off the shop floor" type images i had gathered of all paint cans.

So, as it stands, my idea is as follows, in a nice bullet pointed form;

• Book Looks into the application of spray cans
• An artist/ Person's relationship with the spray can
• Also the intial idea of listing cans into catagories, E.g colour combinations, or most commonly used makes.

To achieve this idea I intend to Interview local artists that use Spray cans, and ask them questions focused at their tools (spray cans) and their relationship with them, not their art.

This will hopefully evoke a really interesting narrative to go along with the images I will take.

I want to take new Images of My spray cans but also the others that I interview to get the idea of the used tool, instead of the brand new off the shop floor paint. The used cans have alot more character, and also tell a more interesting story. Some of  the 100 Images I have already taken are a good starting point for this.

Because of this idea of the artists tool, their relationship with it and how they use it, I think i fitting name for this project at the moment is, Application or Applicate. 

Anyway I'm going to post alot more blogs about this book to keep everyone updated!