Canadian Content Book Design
In March 2010, I was asked to design a journal for the Canadian Studies Association of Undergraduate Students (that name is a bit of a tautology, isn’t it?) I worked closely with the editor, Francesca Taddeo, a lovely and passionate person now studying Law at McGill. Although, I’m sure she thought she was being too demanding, it was great fun having to put together the entire journal in about two days. It was also a great lesson figuring out how to turn the digital document into a printed, paper-bound book.
To better integrate the editorial side with my design work, I knew we could forget about figuring out how to streamline the avalanche of emails swirling past daily. Instead, I suggested that we squat a series of computers in the Faculty of Arts Computer Lab. So with Francesca and a few other editors, we went through all of the submissions, collating edits, standardizing document flow and format. I also had the opportunity to show them some design ideas, to register their interest and work-in their feedback. So, while I was parachuted into the organisation to simply pull together the book design, I feel that I also helped smooth out the editorial process. And I much preferred the face-to-face, studio-style process, compared to the endless rounds of comp-email-wait-recieve criticism that I’ve experienced with other projects.
This has definitely been one of my favourite projects. Francesca allowed me lots of space to innovate and experiment, and I gave her full editorial control. I think it worked well! And of course, having produced an actual, physical artifact, we had to have a launch party. That was lots of fun too, and a great way to see ones work sent off into the world.
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