Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Cover Concept 2
Another concept for the cover, without colour this time, maybe this fits better with the inside content?
Monday, November 17, 2008
Construction
I did a test print of my book the other day just to see how thick it would actually be and if the sizing and flipping works. It was good because it let me see what I needed to fix up in terms of the layout aaand it also made me realize (from cutting each page with a ruler and an exacto) that I am going to need some sort of crazy guillotine or something, because even if I cut each page exactly with the crop marks it will not be precise enough to assure that they are EXACTLY the same size, and this is a necessity for optimum flipping. Guillotine anyone? (my book is about 1/2" thick so it needs to be a pretty sharp one)
Clocked.
So I'm thinking that instead of page numbers, which upon further thought seems slightly useless and doesn't really add anything to this project, I want to enhance that message of time and speed by using little clock icons where the page numbers would usually be. For my "fast" story, the clock will start at 9:00am and end at 5:00pm (a typical office-job work day) and will be animated in the same way as the main imagery so that when the book is being flipped it looks as though the clock is quickly spinning through the hours. And then for the "slow" story the clock will appear to tick at a slower pace.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Covered
I want to try and keep the cover as simple as possible in keeping with the inside content. I'm thinking of just using type. The cover will be a wrap-around and since there are essentially two books in one, I want to also play with this aspect on the cover. Here's my initial concept, just playing with the two opposing words Pell-mell and Lull:
Friday, November 7, 2008
Slow Story Text
I'm thinking that instead of writing a fictional story for this half of the book I want to include facts about the pace of modern life and the benefits of living life at a slower pace. I found an article that pretty much covers everything:
The Slow Life
Do you have the feeling that life is getting away from you, that there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done? Don’t worry, it’s not just you, the pace of city life really is speeding up.
A recent survey by the University of Hertfordshire and British Council found that city dwellers are walking 10 percent faster than in 1994. Singapore topped the list with locals rushing around 30 percent faster than they were in the early 1990’s.
Deliberately slowing your walking pace in the city against this rising tide of rushaholics could see you swiftly swatted out of the way by irritable commuters, but just by toning down the nagging sense that you have to do more, and do it faster, can have plenty of long term benefits.
At least that’s the belief of journalist and author Carl Honoré, a man whose own slow life epiphany came when he found himself speed reading bedtime stories to his son. His book “In Praise of Slow” champions the benefits of taking more time to consider things.
“We live in a world that is obsessed with speed that is stuck in fast forward. We often lose sight of the damage that this road-runner form of life does to us -- on our health, our diet, our work,” he said.
Slowing, not slacking
Resist the tug of technology: turn off your mobile, don’t send that email just yet and try and forget, just for a few minutes, about the thousand tedious tasks that you feel need to be done.
The stigma attached to slowing down equates it with an idleness at odds with the dominant work ethos of always doing more and doing it faster.
As well as the slow food movement, there are slow towns, aiming to improve the quality of life for inhabitants and making them more pleasant places to live. It’s more a philosophical statement rather than a directive.
“But why slow down when you can multi-task,” you might ask? Well, multi-tasking is a flawed skill and there’s been plenty of scientific research to prove it. “Multi-tasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes,” David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan, told the New York Times. “Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information.”
That’s not to say that people who have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time are more enlightened, but most people who have juggled a number of tasks at the same time won’t need scientific research to confirm that by doing many things at once, you’re less likely to do any of them well.
3 Tips to live a slow life
1. Drink more tea -- making a cup of tea is the perfect pursuit and displacement activity to idly consider absolutely nothing and everything. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu called it an essential ingredient in the elixir of life, so it can’t be bad.
2. Walk more -- what could be better than moving at a pace nature intended and getting some fresh air round your chops. You’ll see much more than by taking public transport or driving.
3. Realize that time is nothing more than an abstract concept used to measure the distance between to points, it’s futile and pointless to even consider ‘beating’ it, so don’t try.
Written by Dean Irvine for CNN
The Slow Life
Do you have the feeling that life is getting away from you, that there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done? Don’t worry, it’s not just you, the pace of city life really is speeding up.
A recent survey by the University of Hertfordshire and British Council found that city dwellers are walking 10 percent faster than in 1994. Singapore topped the list with locals rushing around 30 percent faster than they were in the early 1990’s.
Deliberately slowing your walking pace in the city against this rising tide of rushaholics could see you swiftly swatted out of the way by irritable commuters, but just by toning down the nagging sense that you have to do more, and do it faster, can have plenty of long term benefits.
At least that’s the belief of journalist and author Carl Honoré, a man whose own slow life epiphany came when he found himself speed reading bedtime stories to his son. His book “In Praise of Slow” champions the benefits of taking more time to consider things.
“We live in a world that is obsessed with speed that is stuck in fast forward. We often lose sight of the damage that this road-runner form of life does to us -- on our health, our diet, our work,” he said.
Slowing, not slacking
Resist the tug of technology: turn off your mobile, don’t send that email just yet and try and forget, just for a few minutes, about the thousand tedious tasks that you feel need to be done.
The stigma attached to slowing down equates it with an idleness at odds with the dominant work ethos of always doing more and doing it faster.
As well as the slow food movement, there are slow towns, aiming to improve the quality of life for inhabitants and making them more pleasant places to live. It’s more a philosophical statement rather than a directive.
“But why slow down when you can multi-task,” you might ask? Well, multi-tasking is a flawed skill and there’s been plenty of scientific research to prove it. “Multi-tasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes,” David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan, told the New York Times. “Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information.”
That’s not to say that people who have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time are more enlightened, but most people who have juggled a number of tasks at the same time won’t need scientific research to confirm that by doing many things at once, you’re less likely to do any of them well.
3 Tips to live a slow life
1. Drink more tea -- making a cup of tea is the perfect pursuit and displacement activity to idly consider absolutely nothing and everything. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu called it an essential ingredient in the elixir of life, so it can’t be bad.
2. Walk more -- what could be better than moving at a pace nature intended and getting some fresh air round your chops. You’ll see much more than by taking public transport or driving.
3. Realize that time is nothing more than an abstract concept used to measure the distance between to points, it’s futile and pointless to even consider ‘beating’ it, so don’t try.
Written by Dean Irvine for CNN
Time Saver Ad
I was watching TV the other day and this ad came on. Very relevant to the theme of my book.
Colour? No Colour?
I've been bouncing back and forth on whether I want to colour the frames or not. I'm leaning towards not, just because I really like the way the lines look and I feel like adding colour would be a distraction from what I'm trying to communicate. Any thoughts?
Colour?
No Colour?
Colour?
No Colour?
Layouts
So now I've started placing all the frames into a final layout. Instead of just having the text of the story as a static element appearing line by line, I decided to have it move onto the page and scroll up so that when the book is being flipped it is also part of the animation. After a talk with Reg I realized that the point of including text in this flip book was to play with the whole issue of timing - the user can either flip the book and skim the surface of what's going on or they can choose to take the extra time and engage with the text, so the line by line thing wouldn't have worked as well for that purpose.
On that note I was also considering changing the last line of the story to play with the the idea of flipping through vs. taking the time to read by changing it to something like:
"One day as Marty is rushing out of his car to a very important meeting at work,
he sees himself, just a glimpse, in the reflection of the door as it slams shut.
A tired resemblance of his former being. Wrinkles, shadows, the fast life is taking it’s toll.
And he wonders, Will anyone even bother to read this story?"
Because there is a fair amount of text in the book I've included page numbers - they count down instead of up though to tie into the whole theme of the story and the character's impending demise.
Here are some example pages:
On that note I was also considering changing the last line of the story to play with the the idea of flipping through vs. taking the time to read by changing it to something like:
"One day as Marty is rushing out of his car to a very important meeting at work,
he sees himself, just a glimpse, in the reflection of the door as it slams shut.
A tired resemblance of his former being. Wrinkles, shadows, the fast life is taking it’s toll.
And he wonders, Will anyone even bother to read this story?"
Because there is a fair amount of text in the book I've included page numbers - they count down instead of up though to tie into the whole theme of the story and the character's impending demise.
Here are some example pages:
Monday, November 3, 2008
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