I had a hard time coming up with an idea for my product for Stage 2 of this module but managed to narrow it down to something book related. I hope to progress into the children's book publishing industry in the future so books seemed the right thing to do. Apart from that though, I had no idea how I was going to make something desirable and awesome, but also realistically achievable to sell at the shop during the summer show.
Making a whole book would take too long, and would end up being very expensive...
I also thought about making a zine like booklet, but even that can be fairly costly, and very time consuming when factoring in printing If i were to do it myself.
Anyway, while looking for inspiration on the lovingly named f***yeah!bookarts site, (http://fuckyeahbookarts.tumblr.com/) I came across some really nice examples of concertina books by Elsa Mora that inspired my idea for my product.
Elsa Mora is a multimedia artist who makes a variety of artwork ranging from paper cut, paintings or handmade books. These handmade books are what inspired me the most. The one above is really lovely and shows a little paper cut-out scene hiding in a tiny book. It looks really desirable and this kind of thing would snap up well in a shop I think because they would so well as stand alone art pieces.
The cut-out elements make it stand out and feel much more special and unique. It feels very much like a one off because of this which adds to the desirability.
The packaging for the above book, many little boxes inside other boxes and covers. It feels really special and id expect to pay allot of money for this, factoring time and materials.
This is another cut out example that when the pages are folded up, creates a scene. I love the simplicity of the design and you only really notice the insane detail when you look closely. The cut out scenes are really beautiful and work so well together.
This kind of think couldn't be mass produced without same cutting machinery and at this scale it would be very delicate, so again this feels like a one off.
Although I would like to add some 3d/papercut element to my product because it really adds something to a piece of artwork, I have to be aware of the amount of work I want to be doing and the quality of the finished products.
This is very simple but really nice. It shows how the format of the concertina book works really well for sequential illustration aswell as stand alone illustrations that come together through the medium.
Im sold on the concertina book idea already.
