Final Book Project

Assignment Overview

• An original bookish object students will conceive, develop, and produce over the semester
• Students work individually or collaboratively
• Proposal due March 25, prototype due April 17
• Meeting with professor during process
• Milestones and artist’s statement due through Canvas
• Project & artist’s statement due by the project showcase on Monday, May 4, and digital elements to Canvas

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Matthew Kirschenbaum for sharing materials from his BookLab course’s final project assignment, which substantially shaped this one.

Assignment Details

Your final project in BookLab will be an original bookish object—as a shorthand for the purposes of this assignment writeup, “a book”—of your own design and making. As we will see in our readings, labs, and other investigations, the word “book” can mean many things and your projects can likewise take many forms and include a range of media: e.g. a letterpress chapbook, a zine, an altered book, an interactive digital book, a book “kit,” or something else. As we move through our activities, you should be thinking about which media, technologies, and techniques you might wish to incorporate into your project.

You may work individually or collaboratively on these projects, with the understanding that collaborative projects should reflect more work in proportion to the size of their respective teams. You will also submit an artist’s statement (~1000 words) to accompany your project, which will describe its concept and ambitions, its influences, your process, and challenges.

The content of your book will be entirely up to you. You might draw on a favorite topic of research, a hobby, or a cultural interest, among other possibilities. Your book can be informational, scholarly, experimental, artistic, entertaining, or—most likely—some combination of those. Your book may be a singular object or a multiple, and some mediums—like zines—will dictate the latter. Your book can contain original content or remediate existing material (though if you choose the latter, we will need to work together to ensure we follow intellectual property laws). What is essential, however, is that your book demonstrates—through its form, content, or a combination of the two—your critical engagement with the themes and media of our course.

Below are some general design models you could consider adopting, but other models are possible, and hybrid approaches that blend media are encouraged:

• Altered or Treated Book: using an already existing book as your platform, alter or treat it in some fashion. You might think in terms of things to subtract (removing pages, cutting or inking out words, other forms of erasure), and you might also think of things to add, insert, or otherwise augment what’s already there. There are lots of possibilities here.
• Zine: a zine must consist of an “original” plus duplicates. It should have a clear topic or focus. It must also consist of some evidence of copies already distributed (for instance, photographs of them “in the wild”), and a plan for future issues and further expanding your production and distribution.
• Letterpress Chapbook: a small chapbook for which you set the type and fold and bind the printed sheets in the form of a codex. It will be important to keep your expectations modest and to start early. You might also think in terms of “letterpress accents” to a text you print digitally, rather than using letterpress for the entire work. Or else think more creatively: for example, using a small number of words and the shapes of letters artistically; printing a single setting of type multiple times in different ways; and so on. Less is more. Please discuss with me ASAP.
• Book Kit: the idea here is a book, or the makings of a book, in a box. The box or container becomes part of the work, and should convey something meaningful to those who find it. Things to think about include whether a reader is meant to assemble (and disassemble) the book for themselves, what all goes into the box, and how it is meant to be encountered (In a public place? Randomly? Addressed to a specific individual?)
• Interactive Digital Book: this kind of book can develop in many directions, but a digital book should employ and forefront the possibilities of digital media through affordances such as linking, interactivity, changeability, etc. Like the other options, these books should be explicit and thoughtful about their medium. They should, in other words, be books that could only exist as digital books, not simply books that happen to be on the web.

Project Milestones

This project will be your cultimating intellectual contribution to BookLab. In order to ensure you fully develop your idea, we will observe several milestones throughout the semester. The due dates listed here are the latest possible dates for each milestone, but you are free to submit each earlier, particularly if you anticipate revisions.

1. Proposal: Wednesday, March 25

By March 25 you will submit a proposal outlining the book project you hope to complete, as well as the steps required to do so. Each proposal should describe:

1. The content of your book. What will it be about?
2. The format of your book. Will it be printed and bound? A zine? An ebook? A hybrid? Something else?
3. The skills you will need in order to execute your project, as well as a plan for acquiring those skills, particularly if they are not skills we will formally study together.
4. The materials you will need to complete your project, as well as a plan for acquiring these materials. Skeuomorph may be able to help with acquiring some equipment and materials, but I will have to assess the feasibility of this funding on a case-by-case basis.
5. The equipment you will need in order to complete your project, as well as a plan for accessing that equipment.
6. The team working on your book. Is this an individual or group project? If the latter, what does each member bring to the group?
7. A plan for evaluating the project. What are your goals for this book, and how will we know whether and to what extent those goals have been met?

We will discuss your proposals together in order to ensure they are well defined and scoped appropriately. All proposals need to be accepted before you move on to the next stage of development.

2. Prototype: Friday, April 17

By end of class on April 17th you will submit a prototype demonstrating the viability of your project proposal. What you will submit during the prototype stage will vary widely by project, but it should essentially be a proof of concept: evidence that the plan you outlined in your proposal is feasible and that you are on track toward completion. Among other possibilities, you might submit:

1. A few pages from a longer analog project in process
2. A set of conceptual drawings or wireframes illustrating your progress
3. A stylesheet and sample page(s) from a digital project

The prototype is due at the mid-point of the project’s development from proposal to showcase. The primary goal for the prototype stage is demonstrating steady progress, and ensuring that your plans remain feasible. If your project has significantly shifted from what was proposed and accepted at the proposal stage, the prototype stage will also be the point at which you will submit a revised project proposal.

3. Professor Meeting: before April 27

Sometime during your work on the project, you (and your collaborators, if relevant) must meet with me individually to discuss your project and progress. You are certainly invited to meet with me more than once, but at least one meeting is required, before the date the prototype is due.

4. Final Project: Monday, May 4

Your project should result in a final object, set of objects, or digital artifact, as well as an artist(s) statement describing what you have accomplished in your project. These will be due in time for the final project showcase during the last two days of class.

Artist(s) Statement

Your final project must include an artist(s) statement—a reflection, essentially—of approximately 1000 words which outlines your book’s concept and ambitions, its influences, your process, and challenges. Be sure to address what you learned in the process of making the book, and describe what your book means to you in the end.

Like the projects themselves, these statements will vary widely, but they should help readers/users understand the ideas about media/bookishness your project seeks to instantiate, the methods and materials you used in producing your book, and any habits of reading required to fully understand your book project. In short, your statement should summarize the intellectual work of your semester so that the labor of your project—both physical and mental—is clear. Depending on the form and media of your book, your statement may be directly incorporated into your book, or it may be a separate document.

Finally, please be sure to include the following specific information:

• Title
• Dimensions, width x height, in inches
• Number of pages (or comparable measurement)
• Source material (if your book is based on another book, incorporates found materials, etc.)
• Language(s)
• The number of copies extant
• Materials: what is the paper made out of? How is it bound? How was it printed? What fonts did you use? Are there other notable materials? Watercolors? Special inks? Give as much detail as possible.

Project Ownership and Sharing Permissions

Your book ultimately belongs, but I will ask permission to exhibit it—at least temporarily—at Skeuomorph, as well as present photos/video online for other interested scholars and students. Essentially, in my experience these projects tend to be pretty cool. Since I know I’ll be asking for this permission at some point, this semester I’m doing it preemptively!

To let me know whether you are comfortable with this kind of sharing, please include the following permission statement with your artist’s statement. You can just copy and paste, making sure to choose one where multiple options are possible, as indicated in all caps:

I, _____________, GIVE / PREFER NOT TO GIVE Ryan Cordell permission to publicly reproduce images and/or video of my final IS583BL project online and in print for non-commercial purposes related to the BookLab course and Skeuomorph Press. The work will be appropriately credited and attributed to the fullest extent possible. He may share THE FULL BOOK / THE BOOK EXTERIOR ONLY

—————————————————— Signature/ Date

BookLab Exhibit

On the last day of class you will share your projects with each other and interested members of the campus community. We will discuss this event in more detail as the end of the semester approaches, but it will take the rough form of a poster presentation