Design Principles: What is a Book? - Format Research - OUGD404

BRIEF - To look into what makes a book. In doing this I will be creating ten double page spreads that will show my new understanding and knowledge of type, grid and layout. 

For this brief I have looked into formats to get an idea of the size and shape I could do for my double page spreads. I think the format is important as it gives me restriction with the different layouts I could possibly use. Because of this reason I will have to choose a format that is not only appropriate to the brief and the double page spreads, but one that also gives me enough leniency with space for the content. 

I started by looking into A sized formats. I think working with either a A4 or A3 size allows enough room for content and would be efficient, but I would like the format to be more interesting than the general 'A' size:

I then moved onto what I deemed to be more interesting formats. I looked into square sizes as they are less commonly used but also an interesting shape to work with. I feel this size would still allow enough shape and size for effective layouts. I would need to thumbnail with this format more but feel it is a possible route to go down as it is flexible enough to use:

I also looked into landscape formats. I feel this would be a effective route to take as it gives me similar room as the A4 format, but the orientation allows for it to be slightly different than regular layouts. What I found however, is this format seems to be popular with imagery rather than text. I am unsure whether this would work for both, but could experiment with composition and initial thumbnails to see if it could be successful:

I then looked into something completely different. A format that was suggested within a session was 2:1 ratio. I looked at some books that use a similar shape to this, however I found this format was used for more conceptual books i.e. The title 'Tall book' and so then book is 'tall'. Although I think this could be visually interesting to work with, I am unsure whether it would be restricting myself in some way as it would not be as lenient as the other formats I have looked into: