Design Practice 2 - Covered: Initial Ideas - OUGD505

BRIEF - Choose a publication by a theoretical or philosophical thinker who's views and thoughts resonate with me. Once an understanding has been made on the content, develop the book cover that communicates something from it, this should go work with and go alongside an A4 poster. These need to be two-colour prints plus stock. 

The book I have chosen to analyse is 'Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish'. When studying different philosophers and other possible books, his work really stood out as his key points and issues within the text seem to have great interest and value. Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas and social theorist, among others.  

 

'In this brilliant work, the most influential philosopher since Sartre, suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.'

Other Designs of the Book

 

This brief began by analysing the book and taking notes on the views and thoughts of Michel Foucault. I read the summary to get an understanding of what the book was about and the types of themes that Foucault argued and examined. This was to also done to engage with the book in order to be able to extract possible concepts and ideas. 

After the publication was read and understood, ideas and concepts for the poster and book cover were thought about. The initial ideas that were thought about was the idea of power, I thought about how this could be shown through power plans or electrical boards. There was also the idea of how the books title is the birth of prison, there seemed to be possibilities within that as 'birth' is such a powerful word. Another idea that seemed to intrigue me was the idea of timelessness, as one of the themes within the book discusses how an inmates life can be controlled hour by hour, I thought this could have the possibilities to create some interesting visuals. 

Development on these ideas began by sketching out some possible thumbnails for visuals. In a critique we discussed our book and ideas to get possible feedback and further routes to go down. My peers suggested to me that the 'timeless' concept seemed the most interesting of the three. They suggested to look into how something could be removed, as though prison was taking something away from them (their time and awareness). They also suggested how different printing techniques could further this, such as spot varnishing. These idea were extremely valid and something that I then began looking into and researching. 

After research and thumbnail development, I had come up with the idea of removing parts of the title. These however would still be visible through spot varnish. This would add to the idea of removing the prisoners time, communicating the message the Foucault examines, that the torture has gone from the body to soul. As the punishment is now in the prisoners mind, I thought it would be beneficial to create my cover/poster very minimalistic, simple and structured as this fits in well with the 'soul' part of the theory. Layouts and compositions were then drawn up and sketched. Upon development and by looking back at my ideas, I came up with the idea to push the spot varnish further. I could use this to show a very subtle tally chart. This will communicate the 'time' concept further, as the inmate would be counting down the days until released. As I was extremely happy with my ideas so digitally development then began.