1. Write a book specification and describe in detail what your book will be about in terms of narrative, concept and design with reference to the same elements of bookmaking as above.

Narrative: What is your story?
Describe in:

• 3 words – Plants, wilting, light
• A sentence – My photobook contains pictures of plants, such as trees, flowers and moss, some of which are wilted or dead, and light.
• A paragraph – My photobook contains images of flowers, trees, moss and light, these images have a poetic quality to them. The original idea was to explore the idea of floriography, a communication system the goes back to the Victorian era, in which every flower has a meaning. This idea has expanded into a exploration of nature in jersey . It takes you from a vase on a window sill on a rainy day to light shining through the trees and, catching itself on dew and stings of cobwebs strung between branches.

Design: Consider the following

• How you want your book to look and feel
• Paper and ink
• Format, size and orientation
• Binding and cover

• Title 

• Structure and architecture
• Design and layout

after some time I decided I didn’t like this and changed it around.

• Editing and sequencing
• Images and text

Images

Texts

“I hear leaves drinking rain;
I hear rich leaves on top
Giving the poor beneath
Drop after drop;
’Tis a sweet noise to hear
These green leaves drinking near.
And when the Sun comes out,
After this Rain shall stop,
A wondrous Light will fill
Each dark, round drop;
I hope the Sun shines bright;
’Twill be a lovely sight.”
By W. H. Davies

“A yellow flower
(Light and spirit)
Sings by itself
For nobody.
A golden spirit
(Light and emptiness)
Sings without a word
By itself.
Let no one touch this gentle sun
In whose dark eye
Someone is awake.
(No light, no gold, no name, no colour
And no thought:
O, wide awake!)
A golden heaven
Sings by itself
A song to nobody.”
By Thomas Merton

“A bursting into greenness;
A waking as from sleep;
A twitter and a warble
That make the pulses leap:
A watching, as in childhood,
For the flowers that, one by one,
Open their golden petals
To woo the fitful sun.
A gust, a flash, a gurgle,
A wish to shout and sing,
As, filled with hope and gladness,
We hail the vernal Spring.”
By Henry Gardiner Adams

“I came to the mountains for beauty
And I find here the toiling folk,
On sparse little farms in the valleys,
Wearing their days like a yoke.
White clouds fill the valleys at morning,
They are round as great billows at sea,
And roll themselves up to the hill-tops
Still round as great billows can be.
The mists fill the valleys at evening,
They are blue as the smoke in the fall,
And spread all the hills with a tenuous scarf
That touches the hills not at all.
These lone folk have looked on them daily,
Yet I see in their faces no light.
Oh, how can I show them the mountains
That are round them by day and by night?”
By Jessie B. Rittenhouse

2. Produce a mood-board of design ideas for inspiration. Look at BLURB online book making website, photo books from photographers or see previous books produced by Hautlieu students on the table in class.