1. My roommates failed to help me gather all the Cotch Book information, so I started writing the majority of it (like 80% of it) by myself.
2. LOST MY DAMN USB STICK. This not only affected this project (my baby and favourite project, since the beginning of time), but the rest of my 4th year classes, not to mention all my other documents from other stuff (my O-Chair report for Winters College Council, all my Creative Arts Students’ Association documents, and my confidential York Federation of Students files – yes, I am a part of all of these, and yes, I’m expected to have them all as my “first” priority. On WCC (Winters College Council) I am O-Chair and VP Social, on CASA (Creative Arts Students’ Association) I am the YFS rep and social committee assistant, on the YFS (York Federation of Students) I am the Faculty of Fine Arts Director (the voice of all Fine Arts students at York on our Undergraduate Student Union).
3. Tried to re-build all my files (word documents, InDesign files, photos, drawn imagery, etc.)
4. Couldn’t nail down a graphical style so I changed directions
5. Started work on the Cook Book, but then got the new idea for 12 from Reg
6. The photos from 12 failed and there weren’t enough good ones to over power the bad ones, so I went with the Cook Book.
7. Spent probably a week solid just baking in my kitchen all the photos for the book. Screwed up about half the recipes and they ended up terribly. I am never donning another apron again! I hate playing Betty house-wife. Cutting the food into letterforms was even harder and more difficult a process.
8. Photography was another issue, but I fixed most of it with Photoshop.
9. Spent so much money on paper, but it was too thick to run through the printer, so I had to use thinner paper I didn’t want…
10. Then once my file was done and ready to print, the University explodes, so I go to 7 DIFFERENT PRINTING PLACES to get this damn book printed: all the prints ended up NOTHING like the original document. They were too grey, too yellow, too blue, too purple, TOO EVERYTHING BUT THE ACTUAL COLOUR! I went to the following printing places over  days:

• Kinkos at St. George
• Kinkos at Spadina
• Kinkos at St Patrick
• Inquired with Argo (they needed my file for a whole day, so I didn’t go with them)
• Printed in the TEL labs (before the University exploded)
• Printed in York Lanes (the people that work there hate their lives…)
• Staples on Keele and Steeles
• Staples on Young (they don’t know WTF they’re doing EVER)

Then as if those problems weren’t enough, the bulk of the problems came with binding everything:

1. Spent over $75 on binding supplies for this project and saw little return
2. The sewing was FINE. The one part that went well…
3. Ran out of end papers at the last moment.
4. Used an entire epic sheet of millboard cutting co many covers, and used all my printouts of the covers to go over them and they’re either tear, get glue on them, bubble, warp, rip, etc. The cover submitted was the best once, which is sad because it still sucks.
5. Couldn’t find any adhesive to stick my spine to the board that was strong enough, so I had to go on an epic midnight mission to find rubber cement from and friend on campus, and another friend off campus for the other adhesive I used. It stuck together, but I sustained terrible injuries from the glue ripping my skin off…
6. Wasted ALL my paper, that was ohh so expensive, on failed attempts.
7. My room was a disaster zone and I had to spend 2 nights sleeping on the couch because my bed was covered in book-binding supplies.

So, with all that said, now I am finally finished. I’m obviously not that happy about how it all turned out. I wish I didn’t spend so much money on this, because now I’m going to starve for another week (but good thing I made all those desserts: I can eat them now… although my roommates have already eaten most of it, because they’re awesome like that…).

My friend I borrowed the camera from for the project needed it back because she went back home for the holidays, so I only have shotty MacBook-Photobooth pictures of my book to show you.

Here is my sewing practice, to get the hang of it before ruining my paper… And my final book shots (labeled accordingly):

And with that, c’est fini. I can’t say I’m sad to see this project go… but I can say that I learned A WHOLE LOT about printing and binding, and how I should never be trusted to bind anything myself. At least I have a lot more experience now… onward to the next book! Hopefully the Book of Cotch will sail…

THE UNIVERSITY EXPLODED!!!!!

The University Bulletin

WTF?!?! I guess I’m venturing to Kinko’s now… maybe they’ll let me print on my own paper… Gahhhhhh…..

My entire last 3 days have consisted of cooking. I will never step foot in the kitchen after this… everything I touch manages to get ruined somehow. I’ve managed to somehow get it all photographed and with over 200+ photos later, hours of work, it is all layed out, Photoshopped and in InDesign.

Here’s what the “About” page looks like (I still have to type the copy for that bit, but it will be done within a couple of hours…)

"About" Spread

Here’s what the Cover of the book looks like, since I shot it. No turning back now…

Cover

The back is just the white paper by itself… it’s going to be hardcover… just need to finalize my sewing technique once I get it printed and the end papers selected (which is happening tomorrow)

Here are an example of what the spreads look like in the book. Page 1 is the full bleed photo of the dessert, page 2 is the recipe, page 3 is the “type specimen”, and page 4 is a brief history about the invention of the typeface. This is the sugar cookie in didot:

Sugar Cookies Recipe

Flip Spread About "Didot" Type (which is featured in the photo of the sugar cookie)

So, take this and multiply it by 12 recipes. Yes, 12 recipes. I actually made a good 24 of them, but half of them epically failed, so that’s why I could only do 12. The bulk of the time is always spent on failed attempts, sadly…

I just have to write the credits, tools and about sections, cut my paper down to size, and then I can print it. Then I’ll get my end papers and binding supplies and commence the binding.

Here’s to hoping nothing else screws up… my stomach hurts because all I’ve been eating are these desserts…

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.

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)

***************************************************************************

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!)

… so here is my thought right now…

I’m going to give myself a time limit, and if I don’t find a graphical style and start writing my stories soon, like by the time dinner rolls around, I completely scrap the project and start on a new one. I have to pick and chose my battles and this just doesn’t seem to be one that I’m going to win…

I’m thinking my new book idea will either be a cook book or a random food fact book. I don’t know… I just want to cry everywhere right now…

********** UPDATE **********

12:04AM: November 28th, 2010

So, apparently the Gods have it out for me… Not a word of a lie: I was going downstairs to get something to eat and I tripped up on the stairs and screwed up my ankle. This is bad because previously in the summer I fell down a set of stairs on campus, and I busted both my ankles and my back pretty badly. I was on crutches for  months before I could even attempt to walk around with a severe limp. Well, lucky me: my ankle’s been acting up all week this week, and this extra little screw up made all my tendons seize up and the bone in my heel is now sticking out at a really odd angle. If you don’t believe me, I still have the hospital band to prove it, along with the protruding heel bone… :S

I just spent the last 8 hrs at the hospital waiting in line after line trying to get my foot fixed. My dad drove down all the way from Peterborough just to take me because I actually couldn’t even walk. I now have an appointment with an orthopedist on Monday morning, and strict orders to not move anywhere. Needless to say my Cotch book didn’t get going, so this is the official update that I am changing directions and going with a dessert cookbook idea (I had enough time to think about it at the hospital…). I actually can’t take on anything more at this point and it saddens me a lot. I will make it a point to carry on with my plans next semester on making the book, but for now the Cotch has been halted. RIP Cotch Book, until next semester. And apparently the same goes for my ankle, because it is super screed up.

AHHHH. I just want to kick things in the face right now…

I am trying to focus on the design part of the book, but I just keep changing it every 5 seconds because no matter what I do, everything sucks. It’s so seemingly hopeless right now. I either go too far, or not far enough, and I’m just getting so concerned right now because I don’t have my content written either and life is just pressing in on me and NOTHING WORKKKKSSSSSSSS! Here’s just a little taste of the lameness I am creating right now:

I know this layout is too flat, but when I try to make it more “awesome” with hand-written type it makes it just look super kitchy and lame and wrong and I don’t want to look at it anymore.

DAMNNN IT! More exploration and experimentation needs to happen, but do I really have time for that? No. But I will make time. This weekend is hereby dubbed “Book Design” weekend… Get excited for more layout with less lame-ness in them. I promise I will actually get something done… I just need to get inspired again… Book and Editorial Design will happen this weekend.

1) Title of the book: what should it be?

- Book of Cotch?
- Haus of Cotch?
- Just Cotch?
(There’s an inside joke with this one. We always use the word JUST and put heavy emphasis on it, when talking. The point was spurred when we all went to Montreal last year and we saw restaurants JUST called “Restaurant”, we went to an outdoor snow festival sponsored by “Lait”… as in JUST le lait, and we met a couple of people in line for an epic Ferris wheel and asked them who they were here with. “Ohh, it’s just us.” To which we all yelled “JUST US!” and they yelled at us “JUST THEM!” and we made t-shirts and hung out the rest of the weekend going on escapades to find more JUSTs we could add to our collection. Below is a picture we took of a chalkboard we vandalized with all of our JUSTs over the trip, and other such nonsense… I know… you think we’re on crack. But it all makes sense to us…)

VOTE: Which name should be the title of the book?

A) Book of Cotch
B) Haus of Cotch
C) Just Cotch

2) So, I was thinking of having roommate commentary throughout the book, or just articles written in a different font or colour or something, to let the reader know who wrote the story, or from what perspective an idea is coming from. My question is, should I do this or not? Is it too much work and unnecessary? And if I chose to do it, where would I place a legend sort-of-thing? In the roommate profiles, or as a separate piece in the introduction?

VOTE: Should I include a roommate writing legend?

YES
NO

If so, where should the legend go?

3) Because of losing all my content, I’m a bit cinched for time on things. Should I make the majority of my imagery as hand-done line drawings, or as quick vectors (like the vector in the blog post about my USB stick… check it…)?

VOTE: Should my imagery be hand-drawn or vectored?

Here is my book I made for the animated paper/pop-up book assignment. It is the Marauder’s Map from Harry Potter, but not actually a replica of the map.

The map in the books is used to find out where people are in the castle at all times. The user simply taps the front of the map and says “I solemnly swear, that I am up to no good.” and the ink appears on the pages to reveal an animated map of Hogwarts, in true magical style. Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs were the creators of this map. Harry Potter’s father was one of these creators (Prongs), along with his close friends when he went to Hogwarts. This map has helped Fred get in and out of plenty of situations at Hogwarts and it was passed onto Harry.

This map is not made by any Messrs. It’s made by me! And instead of it being a map of Hogwarts, it is a map of the plot lines in all 7 of the Harry Potter books. Each double-page fold is a one-page summary of the book. And as you delve further into the map, the further you get in the story line (i.e. you unveil the later books in the series). When unfolded you get the full view of all 7 book with interactive paper pieces that help illustrate parts of the story. And for those of you who are like my roommate and haven’t finished reading the last book: don’t worry, I made the flip book in the centre hidden, in case you don’t want to read any spoilers of the books.

First opening fold

Full fold out (books 1-6)

Full fold out: Book 7 revealed

It was a super labour intensive and timely project to take on. Everything is done by hand. And no, I did not write on a ruler to write in a straight line. I am just naturally gifted with the ability to write on a straight line without guides. YAY!

Now to get back to real life, and my real book.

Mischief managed.

So as I mentioned before, I lost my USB stick, which contained pretty much EVERYTHING to do with life; 4^th year; and most importantly my book design project. All my updated manuscript copy is gone (I have bits and pieces saved over Facebook, scrap pieces of paper and stuff, but not all of it); my InDesign file with my book grid layed out in it is gone; my images I have taken, illustrated, and gotten for mood inspirations are gone; my type drawings and files I collected for my book are gone; and my general notes on the book are gone (the digital ones that I didn’t write down physically).

Luckily, I was able to extract a trashed version of my initial blueprint PDF I made for the first part, and I can at least draw off of something. But some of my initial planning has changed so I can’t even use most of it. For all the previous details discussed, refer to the previous Blueprint blog post.

POSSIBLE CHANGES

- Change of title (Book of Cotch VS Just Cotch VS Haus of Cotch à leaning towards Just Cotch.)

- Adding a Who’s Who section: A wayfinding system that identifies what commentary (be it a change in font, or colour) belongs to which roommate. Or can I accomplish that in the Roommates Profiles?

- Length of book (because of the unfortunate circumstance I am in, can I realistically make the book as long as I originally wanted to?): shorter.

- Making the Investigation to University Life segmented into different subsections (i.e. Social category Academic category, and a Living category). Or would that make it difficult to contextualize things along a chronological timeline? Adding a timeline at the beginning before the SAL section starts?

CONTENTS OF THE BOOK

Acknowledgements
An Introduction to the Haus: The Origins of Cotch
Table of Contents
Roommate Profiles
Haus Rules
Timeline
Investigation to University Life (SAL: Social, Academic, and Living)

SOCIAL
- Frosh Week
- Off-Campus trips

• Navigate: How to get around the City
• TTC Adventures
• Road Trips
• Case Study: Winters Montreal Trip

- Other Post-Secondary Campuses and how to Make Your Mark

• Case Study: Grayson and UofT
• Queens University Public Transportation Trickery

- Pub Nights
- How To Get Into a Party/Kegger
- Birthday Parties

ACADEMIC

- Tips, Tricks and Advice: First Year Survival

• Acceptance
• Enrollment
• Punctuality
• Note-Taking
• Procrastination
• All-Nighters
• The Library
• Lectures and Idiot Profs
• Game Face: How To Not Get Caught Sleeping in Lecture

- ProfTALKS: Advice
- Academic Services on Campus
- Extracurriculars: Learning in Action

LIVING

- House Hunting
- Roommate Expectations
- The Man Chart
- The Wall
- Landlords
- How to Deal with Roommate Drama
- The Physics of Sound: Sex Rises
- Dishes, Laundry and Cleaning: Oh My!

MANUSCRIPT

I’ve planned out the sections/chapters of the book. I’ve only gotten a couple of the articles actually written (because the majority of them got lost on my USB stick). I will be working on re-writing the rest of the content over the course of this week and next.

SIZE

I cut out paper in different sizes to figure out what the size I like for the book to be held in hand.

I settled on 6.5″ x 8.5″, and it seems to be working the best. Like with the rest of my stuff, my InDesign file with my grid and baseline set up on it were lost. But since I did it once, it shouldn’t be too hard now to replicate it. I’m using the same 5 x 7 field grid as shown in the previous Blueprint.

LAYOUTS & TYPESETTING

I’m probably going to stick with the same hand-drawn typeface throughout the book for the headlines. I’m still debating on the typeface for the body copy of the book. Dekar seems a bit too mechanical, so I might look for a more humanistic typeface.

PHOTOGRAPHY & ILLUSTRATIONS

My photo source will come from a collection of photos the roommates and I have taken over the course of our years together (mainly off of Facebook), but again, most of the images pulled and illustrations made have been lost…

OK, so I was working through with planning my book and other projects I have on the go for school and I JUST LOST MY DAMN USB STICK!

GAHHHHHHH! &@*%#&(!(!@&!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously… WTF? My entitre book design project: GONE. ALL MY WORK FOR ALL MY DAMN 4th YEAR CLASSES: GONE. Of course it has to happen on the ONE DAY I was going to back all my files on my USB stick to my computer and onto a Dropbox. Of course the last time I had my USB stick was at Sheridan College (in the biggest lecture hall that seats over 200 students that is used everyday). Of course I don’t have ANY OTHER bits or pieces saved onto any other form of device that can lead me to some sort of re-starting point.

Not just Book Design but EVERYTHING else is gone. Workshop, Professional Aspects, EDITORIAL DESIGN AND BOOK DESIGN: GONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

All I want to do is cry and die. Ahhhhhh! I have a huge research report for Workshop due tomorrow and The Blue print due tomorrow and I don’t even know what to do… I’ve ripped my entire room apart looking for it. Asked everywhere possible at the Department of Design at both York and Sheridan, and my backpack probably needs to be sewn back together, because I’ve literally torn it to pieces looking for my damn USB stick.

I will do what I can, but I feel super terrible about it… DAMN this USB stick! It is just like a tempting seductress that walks out of your life, never to be seen again, but always tantalizes you with a hazy image of that siren in a red dress. Wow… sometimes I really think I should be a dramatic writer of sorts.

Haus of Cotch Rules to Survival:

RULE #1: DON’T GET DEAD

RULE  #2: EVERYTHING IS AWESOME, ALL THE TIME

Let’s hope this rule holds true… I might get dead in the process though… Excuse me while I go an hyperventilate, cry and die. Negative-coping skills, FTW! Hopefully I’ll stay gold, Pony-Boy…