hey

Hey guys,

Sorry I've been busy with work (it is the holidays). About the cover, after I came home from work Friday, I was about to send my book when I noticed Jordy used teal for his book so I quickly changed mine to purple. I sent mine late Friday after midnight. I used the priority USPS shipping and I'm not sure when it will come in. Right now it says the status is fulfilling and hopefully it will ship soon. I'll keep an eye on the status and if it hasn't shipped by Tuesday I'll call them and see about upgrading shipping.
-jen

now that we are just about done, enjoy this!
Check out this link:

Click for Video

Whoops!

Saying some of the information on LuLu's website, specifically their FAQ area is confusing is an understatement. It seems their agents were as well, or didn't comprehend where I was off base. When we discussed the shipping methods originally in person as a group, it was pretty much understood that expediting a book order meant that for $25 or $50 your order could get rushed and then on top of that you would be responsible for whatever shipping method you chose to go with i.e. overnight etc.

After a chat with an agent and some misleading dialogue however, I left under the assumption that "Fed Ex standard overnight" delivery was part of the super fast or super mega fast expedited options. Good news remember? Well too good to be true as Jordy has already found out, and as been "clarified" to me by a new agent this afternoon. The interesting thing is, I have a chat transcript of the original conversation (mid way down) between myself and the first agent and, the FAQ has an update to it's webpage several hours later. Now the FAQ is quite clear on what a customer gets with the super fast and super mega fast options. Coincidence? Maybe, either way it is what it is and I take whatever blame for this that is due.

So in the end, we're all back to the understanding we were on Monday of last week when we first agreed on LuLu as the source for our materials. Apologies for broadcasting on our blog to the group that getting it shipped fast was such a great deal.

Some of the group members are mentioning the U.S. Postal service's priority mail as a shipping option. According to a chat representative, if you chose super fast or super mega fast in your production option then Fed Ex standard overnight is the only way your book is shipping. The cost of that shipping again is not part of the expedited production. 

—sean

Shipping and Book Cover Color

It's no problem brad. I placed my order yesterday. The book was only $11, but the shipping was $70. Was this the case for everybody else? I had no idea it would be this expensive.

-- Jordy

I've also tried to get ahold of Jen by email. I sent out several notifications throughout the week to see if anyone had claimed the color teal. I placed my order yesterday afternoon and she did not notify me till midnight that we had the same book cover color. So if anybody can get ahold of her to figure this out it would be great.

Does anybody know if its possible to cancel my order, upload a new cover and get the order on time? Does anybody know if Jen has placed her order already. Does anybody know what colors are still available if I am able to change mine, after placing the order?

Thanks.

a little note

Hey, It's Brad. My computer use in NYC is very limited, but I wanted to drop a quick line and let you know that I finished and ordered my book monday night, with 12$ shipping. It is not shipped from North Carolina, where the headquarters are, but instead from the printing factory in New York. So if you don't get super fast shipping / rush order then we are in for trouble.

I'd also like to extend an apology to Jordy, I was in the heart of NYC, near the WTC so signal between buildings was dodgy. Sorry bud.

good luck guys, I'll see you soon.

-Brad

And we call it . . .

It's time to start considering what we're going to title this project of ours. The overall series of books needs a title, and it should draw from within our manifesto/statement. It would be great to hear from Sarah about what some options would be for the slip case. Like what kind of material might be on the exterior and if it will have a surface that can be printed on.

Don't forget, three of us are in letterpress and depending on what the materials of the slip case are we might be able to have it letter press printed or embossed. Will the case be wrapped in some book cloth? How about some sort of coated paper that has a satin finish to it?

Here's my stab at a series title:

• Shockoe Decode - eight views on a neighborhood's visual culture
• Eight Ways to Sunday - looking at visual culture and context
• Neighborhood Watch - observing and recording visual culture

That's all I have for now but if I think of any more I'll edit this post. Let's hear from everyone, some suggestions?

—sean

Voila!

It is done! How do I send y'all y'all the file?

Wolinsky


p.s.
letter accents are for rubes

My Cover

This is my cover for le Visual Culture Collection

-Eric

Don't Forget!

A reminder that we all talked about sharing our book files with each other before final submission to LuLu for publication. Give everyone a chance for some quick critique and more importantly error trapping and idea generation. Everyone want's to get this off our plate so equal time for all our courses can be had. Input from other team members is going to make this so much easier, so please remember to share your work with the rest. I would recommend an email to all the team members when your done with your books as the blog doesn't have any type of alert that I know of.

valenzuelajj@vcu.edu
borkowskiba@vcu.edu
greenjc@vcu.edu
ironsse@vcu.edu
wolinskyes@vcu.edu
troppjs@vcu.edu
gilkeyea@vcu.edu
oneillm2@vcu.edu

peace,

—sean

Yo, would anyone be opposed to me using Cooper black?

-eric gilkey

Shipping Cleared Up

For those of us who are still designing our books, the bottom line on whether to upload on friday or work through the weekend has been cleared up. 

I spent some time on LuLu's live chat help service with "Ben C." and he cleared some things up for us. LuLu doesn't do any production services on the weekend, so if you sent your files into them on Friday the chances are that it wouldn't be touched until monday or tuesday. Again the standard production time is 3—5 business days. That means that pretty much most of us are going to be using the expedited rush service also known as "Super Fast" for the additional $25.

Here's the good news. The Super Fast service does include the shipping to you, overnight and via Fed-Ex! Ben C. explained it, and here's a piece of the chat transcript.

bonogun@juno.com: And just to verify . . . the $25 rush will get orders posted prior to 4 p.m. North Carolina time, will be certain to be printed on the following business/printing day? (soft cover perfect bound)
Ben C: It would be 4PM EST.
Ben C: If you order before 4PM EST then your book will be printed on the same day and shipped the next day and you will received it the next day after it shipped.
bonogun@juno.com: the last part is new to me "you will received it the next day after it shipped". This suggests that it rushes the shipping as well. Is this the case?
Ben C: Yes that's correct.

Good stuff! So again, orders received before 4 p.m. EST and as Super Fast will be printed that day, overnighted the next day and at your door on the third day. So You could in theory submit your order on monday at lunch time and have it in your hands on wednesday. 

Sarah, you need to get real on this slip case and decide what your going to need from us, for materials and how much time to effectively get that done. As a group we want to arm you with all the flexibility that we can. 

I submit to the group that Sarah have access to all the volumes by thursday the 4th, so that she can begin construction of the slip case. If you submit your order with Super Fast before 4 p.m. EST on monday the 1st then we can hook her up by then. What say you?

—sean 

Some Tips

I designed, finished, published, and ordered my book from lulu. Check it out here: http://www.lulu.com/content/5061617

Here are some things I was confused about that the FAQ never answered / wasn't clear about.

1) your cover should be one file, separate from the pages. 18.33inches x 7 inches should be the cover size. The extra .08 accounts for the pages.

2) you should not upload facing pages.

3) when uploading your files, you will be asked to upload your book pdf first. The cover uploading process occurs a few pages down the road in the process. 

4)Lulu gives you a few opportunities to print preview before you finalize. Make sure you DOUBLE CHECK EVERYTHING, even your spelling. 

5)make sure you post your book saved to adobe acrobat 4 format, for maximum compatibility. 

Type Specs & What You Missed

Holy hell what are we going to do?!


Don't panic everyone. Even in the opinion of the esteemed
Professor Steve Hoskins, our group has a remarkable
amount of organization and direction. Especially considering
the span of time with which we've had to do this all in.

The following is a run down on the points we covered today
as a group.

Eric Wolinski has cowboy'd up and said he'd take a crack at

composing a short companion edition to our collection of

books. As a group we decided that this would be a simple

card stock and saddle stitched edition of the same color as

the slip case and will slide in with the other volumes as the

first unit.  That being said, give Eric as soon as you can

the following.

• Process materials: Images, words, ideas, sketches all relating to your process on the project
• A short bio of yourself as well as what your research is about and how it relates to the topic of visual culture and our group's manifesto/statement (see blackboard)

Keep that portion about your research rather short. Most of us might be struggling to compose a significant amount of copy as it is for these books, and there's no point in having the companion bio on you be repeated in your own volume. Just a short condensed statement about your particular research. Eric . . . it will be up to you to take everyone's intel and edit for the common denominator and design those pages from there.

The group has decided on solid colored book covers, so every member should take a moment to post a response to Brad Borkowski's entry, stating which color you would like to use. Let's do this rather than have eight individual posts saying "Hey I'm gonna be" this or that color.

If you haven't done so yet, register on LuLu's website so that you have an active account with which to not only upload your book files , but to seek out help if needed via their live chat feature. 

The type has been chosen by the group. The books will all be spec'd out with Trade Gothic and Officina Serif. The two make a harmonious pairing. Some general guidelines follow.

Trade Gothic

• Titles
• Headings
• Sub headings
• Callouts (if any)
• Pull quotes (if any)

Officina Serif

• Copy text
• Captions
• Folios

With regards to both typefaces, most of us will find that we have quite a few within each family. Use good judgement with regards to this and try not to represent every single member. As a group, we agreed on a point system divisible by eight. So consider 8pt Officina Serif a good starting point for body copy. Larger fonts would go up in multiples like, 16pt 32pt and so on. If anyone runs into some trouble or concerns with this once their layouts start to take place. Please let everyone know as soon as possible. It could be that the jump from 8pt to 16pt type might not look right on our specific layout size. 

Finally there's the "question of time" (good Depeche Mode song if you're not familiar). When the group first discussed deadlines and getting our product back on time, we figured that LuLu should have the files by Friday the 28th. Talk about crunch time right? I re iterated the fact that LuLu does offer the express production option at $25, which promises to have books that are uploaded by 4 p.m. printed and ready for shipping by the next business day. For most of the members, the fee for this service versus the yield in a full weekend to finalize designs, seemed like a valuable trade off. Thus extending the design time into the upcoming weekend. 

LuLu's production facilities according to Brad, are located in North Carolina. One could probably assume that the shipping between here and there is relatively fast. In addition, it could also be assumed that if faster shipping was desired, the cost would be affordable as well. I will get confirmation on what the expected standard shipping time to Richmond would be right away. Everyone needs the ability to make the most informed decision they can, and choose whether they aim to finish before or immediately after the weekend.

As I write this, I wonder if uploading files on a Friday would even make a difference to the production timeline at LuLu. I will get an answer from them on this as well.

—sean

Jordy's Book Cover

I choose "tealish" green for my cover. Let me know if anyone already claimed that. My apologizes for not being able to attend our meeting this afternoon. I'll have some spreads up soon.

My Cover (Brad)

Here's my cover... I get dibs on chocolate brown!

Eric Wolinsky info

Not just any W.

A sample page.

I see that no official size has been decided upon for the group, with that being said, I have took the liberty of showing what I had in mind. (my grid is applicable to many sizes, the idea is to just give people a sense of what I am accomplishing stylistically and content wise.)

I made a color harmony composition shown below. The image pane will stay the same size on each page, just with varying colors and layouts. Enjoy.

Idea for Finished piece

Here's a quick mockup for an idea for the finished piece. Essentially, the spines of the books could be displayed from inside a hard slipcase. The case itself has beveled edges (via matte board cutter). This bevel would help with assembly. Some kind of material could wrap the sides of the board, to provide a surface for a printed design.

Remembering what Prof. Hoskins was saying about the collaborative cover may prove extremely useful in figuring out a unifying design and aesthetic.

Bee bop-a-LuLu

I know, the song is actually Lula. Cut me a break.

So the group has come to a decision on which way to go with printing our volumes for this project. It's going to be with the LuLu online digital press and the following are the parameters so far:

• Landscape format at 9" x 7"
• Full color
• Soft cover
• Minimum 32 pgs
• Maximum 50 pgs
• Standard paper
• Perfect bound

Full bleed is going to be available for us with LuLu. With the dimensions being 9" x 7", bleed your images out by .25 of an inch and expect that at press time, they will trim .32 cm off the page edges. Check out the image below and the link and then scroll down to "bleed" for more details.

All of the LuLu specifics regarding your PDF formats are available on the following link. It's pretty important that all of us become intimately familiar with how LuLu expects PDF files to be set up so that there are no errors and it would also be wise, to swap finished files among each other to check for errors.

Over the weekend and for Monday's meeting, it would be really great if everyone had some input and examples to discuss for the following items.

• Font system to cover headlines, sub heads, copy, captions and callouts(if necessary)
• Some literary and or online references on visual culture for our bibliography
• Posts with imagery or discussions on your work so far if you have not yet done any
• Ideas for a container, box, slipcase etc.
• A way to group design the above packaging

I'll start a new post for everyone to comment on regarding their ideas for a font system for our volumes. From what I understand it's not possible to comment on a blog post and submit new imagery. I'm mentioning this because when we're discussing ideas for packaging and so forth, there may be examples we have found online that we want to share in context to the post. You can use an html link in your comments, or you could paste the web address in your comment. But if the ideas are strong enough, I suggest starting your own new topic so that example images can be seen right there on the post.

Good luck this weekend,

—sean

Shockoe Bottom as a Living Creature

My exploration of Shockoe bottom centers around the comparison of the area to a human cell. A cell has certain specialized parts that handle waste, move vital parts, contain information and produce chemicals. I want to know: what moves? what is waste? what is growing? what is warm? et cetera. Really, this project is more of an indirect comparison, where I am attempting to compare a chunk of a city to a living organism. Huzzah!

Eric W.

the artist's hand

When I went to Shockoe bottom I took some pictures and discovered I was interested in the hand drawn aspect of the culture there. The hand drawn shows the hand work of the artist and add to the environment. So I did a little research and found this website that deals with hand drawn type. http://www.posttypography.com/alphabet/index.html. It is interesting to see what others are doing with type.
-jen

MY STUDY: People and Visual Communication

OK, so I am going to study the area of Shockoe Bottom and its people. By, looking and observing people, i am going to establish hypothesis and on obviously personal veiwpoint of certain things that I pick up on. Obviously, the fact that I am the one doing this, a bias has to be taken into account, but in a way everything is bias or particular as it comes from one person or another. But, I want to observe patterns and common actions that I feel most people see, and simply try to pick them apart (from my eyes) and almost come up with a psychology of visual culture as it relates to people. Which, is everything when looking through the eyes of a person.

So heres just some initial ideas and observations:


Visual culture is all about what we are trying to be or to communicate and therefore are communicating. Its the same when we design, thinking about who were speaking to and then how to make it look. Why has the overall aesthetic or image of an elderly person (aside from their obvious aging)established so rather than that of a young club goer. Surely their actions and place in life has something to do with it.

It is interesting to think of how much of a pattern there is in the differences in apparel on a friday night rather than a monday. You are in a way limited to societal norms without knowing it. Can you go out on a monday night and have as much fun as a friday? Sure, but you may be limited to only certain things going on. There are wide possibilities in expressing something visually. Compare to birds or animals and how they say dominance, and then how do we. Some show their colors for mating and some buck for dominance and this is definitely comparable to humans. But is it possible to not express something, would you need void of clothes or even eyes to do that. Can something untouched by your surrounding and its views be created by an individual, or is everything simply a reaction of another. Your wearing a white tshirt and jeans because you want to communicate as little as possible, but by the way people think, this can communicate many things and be analyzed just as much as if you were decked out in highly "fashionable" clothing that seems to cary more of message. Because everything we do communicates something, and what it communicates is sometimes and usually not the same to different people. Take, "gutter punks" for instance. The people you see on the street wearing all black, they seem to rebel from society, but all end up looking the same and therefor creating a conformation of their sect/culture.

-GILKEY

Homestyle

Look there's no doubt that it would be easy to get our materials, create a series of spreads based on the 9" x 7" output page size and send it off in a PDF file along with cover and back cover art to LuLu and be done with it. And I know that if the course this semester had been established from the outset with this pod system, our group, it's mission and more time to devote to all aspects of it; going with LuLu might seem like more of a cop out. But we don't have much time and we're all trying to find a balance between how deep we delve into the visual culture subject and how snazzy our method is for displaying our results. 

I can say this much, if the two aspects of this project our not on equal ground, then one or the other had better be pretty damn impressive. Otherwise the project as a whole will seem like a joke. So with that, let's consider some of the points surrounding the home made approach to this project.

When we think about doing this on our own at a reasonable rate, there are a few things that would have to understand as parameters. Some might define them as limitations, let's just say they are the specs available to us. 

• Maximum printing size of 11" x 17"
• No possibility of duplex without glueing or french folds
• Spiral, saddle, hand sewn and fold bindings (no perfect bind)

Not everyone has a large format printer for doing tabloid size printouts at home, but the graphic design lab at Pollak has a reasonable rate on color prints after the first print.

Let's jump right to the page size options if printing from home and taking into account half inch margins. If you were able to print out on tabloid size paper then you would have the option of doing two 5" x 8" pages per print out. If you decided to print on 8.5" x 11" paper then you would yield two pages of 5" x 7.5" per print or one 6" x 9" page per print.

Personally I'm not in favour of having any books that are blank on either the left or right hand page of a spread—not every spread at least. There are viable ways of doing left and right printed spreads, as I'm sure some of you have done in the past. French folding and glue by means of a tab or extended edge work really well. If any other suggestions for getting full spreads are out there then post a remark, please. 

In the post discussing the LuLu option, the idea that this option might lack personality was addressed. That any room for special creative features would be eliminated if the book was PDF'd and sent to someone else for a simple machine made print and bind. There's no doubt about this, although just how soul less would depend more on the content. But it can't be argued that we don't have any interesting options available with a LuLu book. With that I want to point out a few things I have spotted that, if made on our own terms might result in a stronger project.

For myself in the past, I've experimented doing some cover design work on a "how to" booklet where my paper choice was a heavy weight Canson color stock. They're called Mi-Tientes. They have a bit of tooth to them, come in a wide array of colours and print extremely well on an ink jet printer. 

Davie board can be used in a couple of ways for covering a set of pages. I have a tutorial that binds together a set of pages into signatures with simple thread and wraps them in an inner paper cover. Then the paper cover is finished off with a piece of davie board for the front and back. Check out the images for more detail. Then davie board can be decorated in a number of ways from collage or single prints, to hand stamping a title. Davie board could also be embossed or printed on in the letterpress studio by myself, Jennifer or Jordy.

Another interesting concept I found was using a slip box cover. A slip box cover could be created to hold all of our volumes or each individual members work if we opted for an unconventional binding method i.e. loose pages. See the images for more detail on this as well. 

The last thing I want to address in this post before we meet again on Wednesday the 19th is uniformity. Whatever method or resource we choose for printing and binding this project, we must have a decision made on a couple of things.

• Type choices for headlines, sub heads, captions and copy
• Minimum and maximum volume size
• An overall project title
• A cover system
• If there is and who is responsible for an "intro" volume

Way I see it, it's go time. I'm pretty sure the consensus is that if this was completed by the first week of December, we'd all be happy with that and could focus on our other classes. I think the toughest part to this project after finalizing our choices on print, is going to be coming up with copy for our volumes. Each of us is going to have to produce a legitimate body of text—regardless of how much—that not only justifies what visuals they are presenting but also connects to our universal idea on the code of visual culture in Shockoe Bottom. 

—sean

Some Pros and Cons

Okay so let's talk about LuLu and some other options for producing our books.

As a group we need to consider a couple of options before making the final decision on which way to go with this. What I'm going to try and do, is lay out a list of pros and cons to each of the possible methods for getting some jobs printed. 

I went to LuLu's site to plug in some figures and see what kind of return we'd get based on our needs. Out of all the products the site offers, the portfolio would be the best option for us for a few reasons. 

• Desired dimension of 9" x 7"
• Saddle stitched up to 56 pages
• Perfect bound up to and beyond a 56 page count
• Upload of PDF file type
• Not limited to any design template
• Inexpensive cost

Using the cost calculator at the bottom right hand corner of the Portfolio product page, I plugged in the following criteria.

• Standard paper
• Soft cover
• Full color
• Landscape 9" x 7"
• Saddle stitch
• 50 pages
• Quantity 1

Those options returned a price of $14.50 u.s. When a few changes were made to produce a perfect bound addition, the price remained the same. However, here is the difference when going with perfect bound instead of a saddle stitch. The perfect bound has a page range of 32—500, and the saddle stitch can not go beyond a page count of 56. 

There are many things that this group needs to work out with regards to universal formatting. Before getting into that can of worms, it might be a good idea if everyone had a rough estimate on how many pages minimum and maximum their project might produce. 

This all seems pretty good eh, but what are the downsides? Well as far as I've come up with, there's only a few and here they are.

• No personal "hand done" feel
• Limitation on methods for unifying the volumes
• No options for interesting folds, cuts etc.
• Up to approximately a week to ten days to recieve

With regards to that last item, there is a fast production method available from LuLu, starting at $25.00 to get your book printed and shipped out the following day. That is providing your order is uploaded before 4 p.m. EST. This does not include the shipping costs either. I do not have a line on specific shipping costs as I haven't gone that far in any creation steps with their website. They do appear to ship through multiple carriers so I imagine the rates are reasonable.

Given all that, what do you think about LuLu? If you'd like to look over some specifics and some frequently asked questions about the PDF requirements, you can review the Book FAQs page on LuLu's website.

Thanks for looking over the pros and cons to the LuLu option. My next post will be discussing considerations with doing this ourselves locally and at home, in the "Homestyle" post.

—sean

Book Fabrication Possibility

So, Roy brought up LuLu which could be a possible route for printing as they also do saddle stitch.

Check the site for possible sizes, they look decent.

-gilkey

The Price of Type

Can the typeface of a restaurant give us hints as to how much the bill is going cost?

This study is purely statistical. I am categorizing the type into serifs, san serifs, decorative, script and hand drawn. After documenting the letters I am going to look at the dinner menus for the restaurants in each category and find the average price for a meal. 

Maybe after this study you can go down to Shockoe Bottom, look in your wallet and find a meal in your price range based on the type. This takes typophilia to a whole new level. 

- Jordy

Live & Learn

So three rolls deep and I realize that the aperture setting for the analog camera has been set on "pinhole" the whole time. At least I assume it was there that long. While shooting with the fourth roll, I noticed that the aperture was constantly switching on it's own to the pinhole state. Probably a result of brushing against my ribcage as it was slung over my free shoulder. At least I was aware of it from this point on and now, remember to double check it before bringing it up to shoot. 

Not sure if I'll bother with having the first three rolls developed on the off chance that they "might" not all be underexposed. Based on what I observed with the switch today, they are. 

Live and learn.

—sean

The Right Mix

Some shots of us hard at work—well, you guys hard at work I'm taking the photos so you'll have to vouch for me

;0)

You guys are a solid team, and make the most out of each of our meetings!

—sean

What is Shockoe Bottom?

• Discover Richmond
• Wikipedia
• River District Blog
• Richmond River District
• Venture Richmond's projects
• Flickr group for Shockoe Bottom/Slip
• Richmond Police: 1st Precinct information

-Jeff

Railways + Highways

Two weeks ago I was able to participate in Leo Divendal's weeklong workshop. His work often deals with photographing the movement of urban spaces. You can see examples of his work here.

My concept for this project is to use photography to show how structures shape the movement of Shockoe Bottom. Two structural presences that can't be ignored in the Bottom are the raised rails and highways. I spent Sunday afternoon photographing these structures and am excited to show the rest of you the other images tomorrow afternoon.

Best,

Jordy Tropp