Curious Questions for Inquisitive Minds

“Curious Questions for Inquisitive Minds” successfully documents a clear understanding of each question throughout the children’s book. It has kept to the original concept of having a large audience starting from the age five and upwards, that appeal towards parents and their children. 

I am extremely happy with my first children’s book and finally come away from University with something I want to do in my life and thats Children’s books.

The photographs are light-hearted, factual and but play a vital role within the book by narrating the questions, whilst the answers give a simple and well structured description. Each object within the book represents the species as a whole and portrays it in a realistic view. In a general amount of pictures I have photographed Dylan, my son, either looking up at the sky, holding a bubble or puckering up to the camera. I wanted to portray a character within the children’s book, so the audience can connect and relate towards this boy, as he discovers the questions himself. 

The colour is important within the series, it symbolises a realistic and factual approach within the questions and emphasises on the positive objects throughout our daily lives. Each page excluding the questions, have been fully bled to the edge of the grid, showing every detail of the image. This layout gives a repetitive flow of vibrant images that the audience can understand quickly. However as the images are different and random, this gives the book its unpredictability and a sense of what question could be next. The choice of text is bold, clear and demonstrates great importance of what it contains. 

I will defiantly look into getting this published, for the exhibition I want to produce another one, so it doesn’t get too mucky. I have throughly enjoyed the process of learning about the great and timeless classic 
the children’s book.
I hope to find a job that will branch me out even further into the world of children’s books. 

Lets see shall we!

Progress of my children's book

Here I have tested with my underwater images and looking at way I can represent the text. 

The bottom spread holds more luminosity within it. 

I will need to stick to white text throughout the book though.

Again I am playing with the background image and I am finding the more up close the better as you concentrate on the text even better.

I will have to sort out the text below, there is too much and looks too bulky.

I like this layout still but don’t know how I can position it with the full bled images
However the text looks awkward in the corner. 







The bottom one instantly, I like how illuminated it looks and how Dylan almost touches it.




The top image is looking really promising, however I need to be aware of the black changes within the spread, will have a look at colour correcting it and sorting out the text. 




This layout looks a lot mor stronger, the staged family shot just looked too miserable and stood out like a soar thumb. I will need to look at changing the text to white with a different image





This works, however I think I need to put the butcher image on top instead as it shows more colour and information about red and white meat. 




This gives a clear and funny approach to the question, however I do not think the bottom image on the right is strong enough as its out of focus and exposure.




I think this layout is looking really strong, I prefer the bottom spread as it gets rid of that cloud and concentrates o the blue sky






Here I am matching the colour on photoshop with the bubble sequence. This is to give the black a natural flow through the spread,
When doing this, it lost its vibrance, I will have to look at another way. 





My book will be sectioned into fours, 3 sections will have 4 double page spreads and the last section will have 2 double page spreads

Here is how I have imposition  my book using the scrap pieces of paper. I have printed it out in black and white and it all seems to fit together nicely. 

Here is a test strip of the images before I start printing, I save my settings on the printer, to double sided paper matte, with slow printing so it wont smudge when coming out. 

Once printed, I place the scrap paper on top to understand what pages need to be printed and were. Its important that when printing, you print every other page first then come back to printing on the back, otherwise it will smudge. 








Once all printed, the booklets are folded using a bone, ruler, blue mounting spread and “scotch” paper to not get the pages dirty. 



?
I arrive in Lewes
and everything is good to go with the book.
For the front cover I pick a bright pasty blue, that fits in with the first question, why is the sky blue?
I then give in my pdf of the question mark that looks like this. It will be varnished, so its easy to see.  

Bookbinders of Lewes

Once my book is bound, I will take my pages on the 21th April, ready to be bound in Lewes. I liked the selection of work they use, especially with colour.

Talking to them on the phone, they did a various amount of Blue and also an blind impression print on the front cover.

When working in Indesign, I must have a 2 1/2 inch bleed round the edge for it to be trimmed. 

The book will cost around £70-£80 with a 3-4 day turnaround. 

Damien Hirst

An incredible blue on the cover, that makes me think of the outside cover of my book

This crop version concentrates on the detail you would observe when seeing the real thing. I love how this is positioned in the book almost if its swimming into the pages. 

Hirst’s photobook, Damien Hirst: pictures from the Saatchi Gallery is just as colourful as his work. The butterflies are zoomed in to concentrate on the detail of the series Out of Love. Viewing his work as an installation and a photobook, I believe his books give his work the right justification and element of how powerful his work can be. 

His butterflies I believe is one of his strongest installations. 
Documenting butterflies recently it has given me perspective of how beautiful and individual they are. I think they deserve to be in a exhibition because they are a exhibition themselves.




I love the text that is printed over the image. The layout works well as the you can read the text easily as well as looking at the image,
This is what I want to do for the answer pages.










I loved this room, it was very child friendly and showed a observation of colour, movement and patterns. 


Artist, Damien Hirst was a huge influence upon my book as colour, text and life’s questions run throughout his work. In a recent documentary (Damien Hirst: The First Look, 2012, April 2nd) on Channel Four, Hirst and Noel Fielding take the first look through his retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern Gallery, London.  When walking around the installations he talks about serious subjects including death and life but it witty manner. When viewing his work, he finds children appreciate and understand more than adults. (Hirst, 2012) I found this comment interesting as “Curious Questions for Inquisitive Minds” is happy, light-hearted book that children enjoy, however deals with the questions about our world that we still do not know.




Here at the retrospective for his work, I can finally walk around his works and understand exactly what makes him so unique. 
This was fantastic to circle, as you can’t circle a shark, I loved the size of it, however I loved the detailed and going really close to it to investigate the bubbles frozen off the sides of his body. This is a real captivating body of work, that has taken me years just to see photographs in books and newspapers. But finally when looking at it, I felt like it was famous! 

Why do we kiss?

This question will replace the tongue one as its not strong enough. We only did one shoot with the kisses and immediately got a  playful and funny image. With a bit of colour adjusting and saturation, this could look bright. 
I love the end image, Dylan looks drunk on kisses. I like the question too, as its something we all practically do each day and will make you wonder why and where we exactly get this idea from. 

Why do boys have nipples?

I love the sense of discovery and exploration within these images, he  looks as if he is very interested on what lies on his torso. It has been hard to photograph this question, as Dylan has had chickenpox, however I will see how I can photoshop them out. I like the top left, as I feel it looks the most natural out of the three. 

Why are we ticklish?

These images make me feel ticklish, as that feeling is so strong. I would like to find a more stronger image, as I think these are too blurred and I can see the dog in the background.