What is a book?

BRIEF:

Produce a book made up of a set of 10 double page layouts.

Your page content that should be informed by a personal interest but should, in turn, demonstrate a growing understanding of the fundamental principles of a grid, layout, type and format plus the form, function and construction of books: all of which is introduced during studio sessions and workshops. There principles and techniques should then prove to be a useful starting point to develop a series or sequence of page layout that effectively communicates your chosen content. 

Ideas:

I decided to think of topics for this brief that would contain a substantial amount of information. I initially thought about things I am passionate about and what interest me. Also I thought about topics where I can draw some illustrations by myself. I thought about many of topics such us; to create a book about '100 things to be happy about', 'cats- why cats are better than dogs?'(as I love cats), 'tattoos illustrations' (as I am passionate of designing tattoo illustrations), 'guide' (as I am fun of Paul Arden's books I thought about making guide for chosen topic) or a book about 'drugs' (I thought it might be interesting one). While writing up those ideas on the paper, I felt that, they are still not making me really want to do them and I saw lots of this kind of books on the internet while researching for the idea, while thinking of doing those ideas, I didn't have many ideas how to start doing it and how I want them to look like. I wanted my book to be unique, containing lots of information, and a bit of history. Woking up next day morning after having really weird dream I have reached for my dream dictionary to check out the meaning of my dream. The first page contained the history about dreams, where they came from etc. which interested and inspired me. My immediate thought was to create a publication about dreams and a little dream dictionary. I think the idea of this kind of book perfectly shows what I wanted to do for this project. I wanted it to be unique containing history, illustrations and a bit of imagination. This topic allows me to do all those things. This idea intrigued me, as personally I believe that dreams are some kind of magic and I believe in having prophetic dreams as well as I have experienced it in my life. Also I know couple of people which experienced it as well. The photo below shows my polish dream dictionary which inspired me. 

From reading my dream book I gained a lot of ideas for the content, planing to focus firstly on the history of dreams, different legends. I will be doing a book which will be divided into couple of sections. The second section will contain informations about the same common dreams which everyone of us has experienced in life. During my research I have found an article with illustration of a man, saying that 60% of people has seen the same man as the one on illustration in their dreams. The third section would contain the dream interpretation dictionary. I will produce lots of illustrations related to the topic. Moreover to make my book interesting, I will try to illustrate some of the dreams as well.  

Today's lesson we have been divided into small groups with student's from the second year to hear their feedback on our ideas. I think it was successful as they gave me a lot of new ideas which I can include in my 'Dream Book'. One of them was to create a section where I can write about 'Lucid Dreaming' which it is the ability to know you are dreaming while you are dreaming. A lucid dreamer is able to go to sleep at night, and wake up within his or her dream. Once lucid, you can explore and even change the elements of the dream. Moreover this ability is really dangerous and it has lots of consequences, which also I am going to explain in my book. Also the other idea was to add a section to my book about people's experiences while having prophetic dreams etc.