In preparation for my first session at Impress, I am working on images to expose for a book. I've been using Photoshop to experiment with ordering and layout - ah, what a wonderful tool PS can be! Here's a peek at two possible pages - it's just a rough "sketch" .
As well as pages based on imagery, I've been exploring some text-based pages. I love constructivist, dada and futurist art with their use of typography as a graphic element, and of course artists in these movements were the first in the 20th century to produce artists books. This is one of my favourite examples of this type of work.
Ruth Laxson is a book artist who is a great source of inspiration to me. She began her press, Press 63 Plus, at age 63 and established herself as much respected in the field. Her books expressed a real playfulness with text and are reminiscent of concrete poetry.
Playing around with text in Photoshop (which, by the way, makes exploring that kind of artwork so much easier) I have decided that I really want to develop my own style with text. The beauty of the constructivists is that their artwork looks deceptively simple, but that is the way of all good design. Of course, it never is that simple to achieve the dynamism and perfect composition required. Like Ruth Laxson, I hope to make the visual impression of the text echo the sense of the words. I came up with a number of alternatives - the one below is the one I find most satisfying.
