Final Set Up!

The day of reckoning! Now all we can do is cross our fingers :)

Revised and finalised experimental bookmaking project :)

Finished product!

Experimental Bookmaking Prototype

This is my first go at my toy mockingbird. The idea is to tear it apart or kill the innocent bird in order to grt to the text. The text is a series of quotes which will give the essence of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. They are based around racial prejudice ('You Nigger lover......What kinda man are you ?') and around innocence (How do you know we ain't Negroes?').

The bird is soft and cushion like to reinforce the idea of its innocence.

Development

I worked on my boook cover in photoshop adding a white wooden texture to the picket fence and making the mockingbird look fabric like. The sewing pin is to represent the constant annoyance of the white community as the Negroes are simply trying to live their lives.

My Experimental Book

Here is the template for my own experimental book;

I plan on making a mockingbird out of fabric and cushioning that can be pulled apart into diffferent pieces and velcroed back together. This will demonstrate how the black mockingbird, Tom Robinson, was treated by the white majority.

Each section of the bird will fall away to reveal one or two key quotes from the novel. These quotes I have specifically chosen to focus on illustrating my main chosen themes of racial prejudice and the loss/destruction of innocence.

The material will be slightly see through to show the white insides of the black mockingbird suggesting that all creeds and colours , races and religions are fundamentally the same on the inside. We are all people.
This is one of my pattern pieces;

Here is a rough picture of my mockingbird as it stands today;

As of yet, it is missing its tail and beak. Hopefully after these additions it will resemble more of a mockingbird than it does right now!

Typographic solutions

This typographic solution for 'The Raven' would be great for 'To Kill a Mockingbird' also and resembles one of my previous ideas but in a more sophisticated way.

RAINBOW IN YOUR HAND : Experimental bookmaking

I came across this cool idea while researching for my own experimental bookmaking project.
This book started as a parsons personal project in summer 2007, and was soon published from a Japanese bookstore "Utrecht".
It's a flipbook, but rather than seeing animation, it creates a 3D rainbow in your hand! Since being published it has been featured on Japanese TV, Newspapers, major news & blogsites like yahoo news.

Special Edition Books

Penguin Books just announced an upcoming series of re-issued classics called "Penguin Threads" with embroidered covers illustrated by Jillian Tamaki. They are breathtaking. Amazon already has all three titles that she did available for pre-order: Emma, Black Beauty and The Secret Garden.

Major kudos to publisher Penguin Books for such a beautifully art-directed and realized series of covers. (They're embossed to mimic the 3-D feel of embroidery.) Tamaki did an astonishing job of needlework. I absolutely love the multi-colored hair. Modern, sweet, beautiful. Inspired. There are more images via TheAtlantic.com

I think this idea would work well with my novel also to create the homely feel of Maycomb town, Alabama.

Related: Penguin Books Stitched Cover: Great Expectations

Embroidery As Art: Jillian Tamaki

From Black to Colour!

Here is my book cover which leans more towards the celebratory aspect of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. I didn,t like how my focus was on black and white because I understand the book to be a story of childhood understanding which is not always so black and white. The perspective of the story that we get comes from the innocent and colour laden eyes of a 5 year old girl and I wanted to illustrate this with the lighthearted bunting pattern.

Home is where the Heart is

Seeing as 'To kill a Mockingbird' is set in the 1930s I'm going to spend time now working in craft materials and fabric rather than technologically based media like photoshop and Illustrator.

I am going in search of rustic finishes rather than the crisp lines and starkness achieved with computers and technology.

Photoshop Mock - ups

This is a typical white American picket fence, caging in the black background. I was happy with the way the fence came out resembling the high enclosure of a prison also, giving it a double meaning. The stark contrast of the black and white serves to represent the high tensions which existed between the black and white communities at the time.

This cover is designed to resemble the newspaper headlines that would have been a massive topic for discussion over the course of Tom Robinsons trial. However, I feel it is too cliche and the black and white and red is a bit more forboding than I had intended!