Design Principles - What is a Book - Folding

Design Principles

What is a book? 
Session 3 - Folding

The first part of this session was dedicated to experimenting with different folding techniques in order to establish a range of different ways in which we could make a book. I found this engaging and interesting as it allowed me to physically see the different ways in which books can me assembled and made from only folding the paper. I was put into a group of 6 other students and we were tasked to try an discover as many innovative ways to fold the paper into a book as possible. I feel we succeeded in folding paper into a range of different shapes forms to produce a range of books that could be filled with content. 

As seen above we created a vast ran of different designs that all incorporated paper folding, some of the most notable examples included the hotdog fold which we found to the most efficient form of folding as this presented the largest number of pages per single sheet. This was produced by folding the sheet in half then further folding it 4 and cutting along the top two boxes that occur when unfolded, these were then pushed together to create this style of book. I liked this as I found it efficient and had a professional aesthetic, Following this I did some brief research int the hotdog found and found it was one of the most popular folding styles for small publications as it can produce a high number of pages and does not regime any added components such as glue or staples. 

My favourite of the folds we produced as a group was an innovative fold that was simple created by folding a sheet in half length-ways then further folding this sheet in on itself three times in order to create a simple little book that I felt had a quirky and playful nature due the way it opens and how the user interacts to the unconventional layout. I felt this book could be used in a range of concepts for example children book as they would find this unique layout engaging and exciting as well as map reading as the when opened up this gives the opportunity to produce a large full bleed image over the inside spreads. 

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EXTENDED TASK

As an extended task to this session I was asked to choose one of the folded designs we had created in our groups and produce an A4 black and white guide to producing this particular folded publication. I thought this would be good to way to fully understand the mechanics of how the folding of a particular publication works as to be able to describe it one must first have a good understanding of how this works. I chose the second publication pictured above as I felt it was unique innovative and quirky. I started by considering how I would produce my publication and decided to use the design style of IKEA instruction booklets as these were simple bold and informative, much like the structure of my chosen layout. I found these guides easy to follow and straight to the point so decided this would be a good way to produce my publication. I researched a number of IKEA instruction books both online and from primary sources as I had some of my own that I could analyse, I found that they were produced in black and white similar to the limitations of this brief, were often pocket side and featured no text, only bold and simple illustrations. This made the instructions universal irrespective of language barriers except the front covers and name of the product. I wanted to imitate this style of bold illustrations and no text as I felt this worked well in conveying the required information in the simplest form possible. 

To make my own publication I first folded a piece of paper into the format of the book and measured the size of the available surface area, I then allowed a 2mm bleed either side of this to account for the increasing paper thickness when folded and to ensure no information was cut off that page when folded into the final publication. I then created a range of simple vector illustrations that incorporated extremely basic shapes such as squares and dotted lines to represent the folds. Following this I wrote the page numbers on each of the pages of the scrap book I made as a guide to estimate the size and opened this out to find out which order each page needed to appear on the master to ensure when folded it ran in the  proper sequential order. As you can see from the rough nature of this image this took a number of attempts to work out the best order to ensure the pages ran logically. 

From this I could then create a master page and place the illustrations in place this plan also helped me to identify which pages needed to be placed upside down on the master to ensure the pages all became the right way round when assembled. 

With this master page assembled I could then print publication. As I had previously measured each page I found that my calculations were correct and that the book folded perfectly, this ensured that no illustrations were hidden and that that pages were central within each fold which gave the book a relatively professional feel. I chose to use helvetica as the typeface as this gave the design a modernist feel, It also aided the practicality of the design which was based around the central ethos of displaying the information as easily as possible. I am happy with the outcome of the book and feel that it would simple to construct this type of fold following this guide.