Another take on pop-up

White Noise by David A. Carter

This pop-up book focuses not only on how the shapes and colour spring to life when turning the page but also the sounds that the page turn makes. There are parts of each page which interact with each other creating creaking, popping and whooshing sounds to accompany the text and imagery. 

I think that it is fantastic to see someone put so much thought into creating an entertaining children's book that all aspects of it add more depth, down to the sounds of the page turn. All in all it makes an experience for the senses, and really sets itself apart from other pop-up books.

Marion Bataille

Whilst looking at more unconventional ways of using the format of the book I found the works of Marion Bataille. She explores simple concepts using numbers, letters and pop-up in a very elegant way.

The example above is Bataille's book 10. The book both counts up from 1 to 10 and down from 10 to 1 by using pop-up and folding to switch certain elements of the numbers about, 2 becoming 9 and so on. The concept is very simple indeed, but it is done is such a precise way that it comes across as genius.

ABC3D is another of her books that uses similar techniques. In this book however the turn of the page is used to make each letter move, giving it more character. This emphasises the surprise of a page turn. The reader knows which letter is coming next, but they don't know how it will present itself.

Start of BA7 Research - Book Art Book Shop

As I am considering exploring the form of books for BA7 I went to the Book Art Book Shop in London for some preliminary research.

There were many different examples of ways the format of the book has been altered or exaggerated in order give further meaning to the contents.

The example above is a book that has been modified - each page has had the illustration cut around leaving a book of lots of small delicate and intricately cut out drawings, much like butterflies and moths in a museum display cabinet.

This hand bound book contained hundreds of bird sounds. I thought it was an interesting concept, and the small, very thick format was intriguing. It was also unusual to see a hand bound book.

This book cover caught my eye because of the bright colour scheme, but also because of the unusual design. The title is almost illegible and looks to be a distorted black letter font, contrasted with the very bold and modern type and lines on the rest of the cover. It almost reminds me of a cryptic puzzle that needs to be solved. The combination of the blue and metallic red print was also very striking, like an optical illusion.