3 ideas and a Figma prototype
Hello all! Here is my Figma prototype of my book online. I managed to keep the same fonts as I had in my book, but adjusting the layout of the pages was weird. I feel like the small page size online really reduces the ability to format the piece in an effective way. Oh well.
Onto ideation!
Idea #1: I kill plants. I really, really, don’t try to, it just happens. Especially when I feel the urge to create new life by propagating plants. That’s when I end up killing plants, always. However, I find that centralized or summarized information is hard to find and so I want to make an aesthetic but useful infographic that brings a lot of information together so that I don’t accidentally ruin propagations again. If possible, I would make it in the style of Posterzine, the magazine that is a magazine but as you slowly unfold it, becomes a poster as well. This idea would be the most challenging artistically (need images), content wise (research), and in terms of form (many panels will be in different directions but all need to be brought together somehow).
Content: A poster infographic of how to propagate plants
Medium/format: A1 size poster paper, printed, color
Question: In which ways would the magazine piece be more effective, and in which ways would the poster be more effective? What does it mean for something to be two forms at once?
Audience: People who are interested in basic planting
Idea #2: Coming from a family of 70+ people, it becomes difficult to keep track of the family recipes, good side dishes, memorable dinners, weird-but-somehow-delicious concotions, etc. I want to reach out and connect to people I haven’t spoken to in a while and closer members of my family to gather all these recipes and more into a cookbook. I would intersperse all my own recipes up to the present moment, as well as gather ones from friends and my mother that I really like. Essentially, it would be the cookbook for me that has all of my recipes in one place instead of printouts and handwritten ones strewn about. This idea would be the most rewarding because I would get to talk to people, and it would be fun to rediscover favorite dishes. It would be a challenge, however, to edit and organize recipes that come from so many families.
Content: A familial cookbook, but more specifically a cookbook with all the recipes I want to get from people. Really, I just want an excuse to amass all these wonderful recipes into one book for my own needs.
Medium/format: 8in x 10in book, color cover.
Question: What level of sterilization brings all of these dissonant recipes together, and what is the benefit of leaving the individual recipes in their handwritten, messy, but characterized forms? How much can something be edited before it becomes something else entirely? And what does it mean for all of these recipes to be put together under one cover (would it be brining them together, or highlighting their differences)?
Audience: My personal extended family, of which there are a lot
Idea #3: This was the favorite among my small group when we paired off. I want to make a “Burn Book” that is made to be burned. Impractical? Maybe, but I feel like I see many things on TikTok now that encourage people to “let go” of something by writing it down and then burning it. But paper is easy to keep. A piece of wood is much harder to hide away. Ideally, it would encourage people to actually “let go” of what is keeping them down, and burn it — plus there’s a nice pine scent if I use pine! This project would be the simplest. It would be difficult in actually putting it together. However, I think the wood-burning would be the easiest part as I would just be making lines. I would also need to research types of wood (probably would go with a softer wood that can be cut into thinner pieces (1/2 or 1/4 inch) and pair the whole thing with a marker that can hold up on wood.
Content: A “Burn Book” made to be burned, with a wonderful pine-y smell
Medium/format: Pieces of wood with lines burned in to replicate a piece of ruled paper, held together with maybe loose binder rings.
Question: What can we call a book, and is the form of a book necessary to the evocation of wanting to write? How far can I go from book form until it no longer can be called a book? In the same vein, how close do I have to be before it is considered a book?
Audience: Anyone who has thoughts/emotions to burn.