Ohh, wow. Only one week more remains until this book project is due. I’m surprisingly not freaking out as much as before. I’m just in a state of trying to push through things. So here’s my update on the book: The Haus of Cotch Book is dead (for now).
Instead, life has been birthed to two new books. Neither of which I am sure will be the completely finished project… But for now, here’s the situation:
BOOK ONE: 12
12 is essentially the mini-version of The Haus of Cotch book. It tells the story of twelve hours in the Haus of Cotch. Think of it as a visual essay of sorts… Photos have been taken with very crude technology (AKA a disposable camera) to keep in check with the “crude” nature of the philosophy of the Haus. I’m still waiting to get them developed, so I don’t know how they’ve turned out yet… but essentially the book will contain a preamble at the beginning of the book explaining this is just a little taste of the bigger Haus of Cotch book to come. It is non-apologetic and exposes all of it’s flaws and various mistakes and misfortunes that have fell upon it for the entire year. The book is not meant to follow a linear or logistical pattern. It is sporadic, just like each of us.
12 will be a smaller, more pocket version of the Haus of Cotch book. Like a mini “guide” to twelve hours in our house. It will be very much photo-based with hand-drawn notes scribbled on top, or computerized vectors overlaying the image to create more of a humorous mood to the pages, or to explain what it happening (but leaving it pretty open and vague, so everyone’s experience of the book is subjective). It will alternate from full-bleed images on one page, to text/hand-scribbled notes on the other, to a full-bleed double-page spread of a critical or funny moment in the twelve hour span of time.
Following the rules of the Haus, this book has rules too:
#1: Don’t get dead.
#2: Use only disposable cameras (max 2) to document the night
#3: Only document 12 hours of the night
#4: Don’t screw with your roommates.
#5: Everything is awesome…all the time.
#6: If you pay for it, it doesn’t count.
#7: OHH YAHHHHH!
#7.b: oah noh…
#8: Everything can be fixed…with drugs and water.
#9: Don’t lose the camera: NO MATTER WHAT.
#10: Must make it back home in one piece (camera and roommates).
Things left to do for 12:
- Develop photos (tomorrow)
- Write preamble (today)
- Get paper (did that last week)
- Build new grid and start layout (tomorrow)
BOOK TWO: Sweet Type
Sweet Type is a dessert recipe book. Instead of just photographing the cooked desserts as is, they will be shaped into letterforms of different typefaces. It’s like a type specimen book, but tastier because you get to EAT helvetica, bodoni and zapfino afterwards! The book follows a very methodical pattern to it’s layout. The first page will be a full-bleed photo of the dessert. the page opposing it in the spread will be the recipe. When you turn the page, the next page will be a type specimen analysis, using a close-up image of the food to knockout the form. The page next to it will explain some historical background on the type. Each dessert will be a different typeface.
I’ve been working on Sweet Type since last week. Below are some screen grabs of my layouts so far, and the desserts I’ve managed to make and take pictures of.
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- Acknowledgments
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- Black Forest Cake
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- Table of Contents
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- Sugar Cookies
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- Peanut Butter Banana Brownies
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- Fruit Pie
I’ve layed out the following pages:
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
About Sweet Type
Tools
Sugar Cookie
Black Forest Cake
Doughnut
Chocolate Mousse
Peanut Butter-Banana Brownies
Crème Brûlé (I think I’m going to pick a different dessert for this one because I don’t have a flame torch to make this… NEWS: I’m doing chocolate chip cookies now!)
Fruit Pie
Things left to do for Sweet Type:
- Layout pages for the following recipes (doing this today):
- Gingerbread Cookies
- Pecan Tart
- Pumpkin Cheesecake
- Banana Bread
- Carrot Cake
- Bake the following recipes and photograph (doing this over the weekend):
- Gingerbread Cookies
- Pecan Tart
- Pumpkin Cheesecake
- Banana Bread
- Carrot Cake
- Black Forest Cake
- Doughnut
- Chocolate Mousse
- Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Photograph cover and images for tools and about pages
- Write/design all the type specimen pages for every recipe (today/tomorrow)
- Hand-trace over headers and place them in (today)
- Get paper (did that last week – still need to buy end papers: will do on weekend)
- Photoshop images (weekend)
- Print (Monday)
- Bind (Tuesday)
- Finish (Wednesday)
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With all that said now, I guess the majority of my work now lies with photography, baking, laying out and finishing. Who knows, maybe I’ll hand in both books? Who would have thought I would go from having 1 epic book, to no book, to two books? I’ll update you on the feasibility of this… but for now it seems do-able, because I don’t have other classes now to distract me from the task at hand. The only hiccup I potentially see is the print labs here at York closing before I can get the chance to print… then the adventure will lie instead with finding another printed that will let me print on my own paper… le sigh… (THIS JUST IN: The printers at York don’t close until next Wednesday: I’m SAVED! Awesome!)
