This was a pure joy of a project. I was commissioned by Newport University Photo Art (Now University of South Wales) students to make a book documenting their work, which they would sell and distribute for promotion.
The course is a 3 year BA Hon degree exploring aspects of contemporary photographic art. There were 43 students who had work in the book. They had chosen to make a physical, high quality publication, rather than pay for a one off exhibition in Cardiff or London.
The content was comprised of 4 pages for each student to display their work, a 6 page 'In conversation with...' essay and artists statements.
The publication was a case bound (hardback) 200 page book with a Spot UV finish on the lettering on the cover. We printed around 750 copies. These were distributed to select photography magazines, art critics and galleries. Some were also on sale at the Photographers Gallery, London, the Arnolfini, Bristol and the Ffotogallery, Cardiff.
I worked with the excellent Bristol based printers Taylor Brothers for production.
Despite having to provide work for the book at the same time as preparing work for their final show and preparing for final assessments, the students were very professional in getting me everything that was needed. That just left me the logistical headache of having to layout out 172 art works, with artist names and titles.
This was a very rewarding project. Getting a quality rich product to touch and hold at the end was a pleasure. As well as seeing the students satisfaction and pride in their work.
This (below) was the third publication I made with the Newport University Photo Art course.
For this time I worked closer with the students than on previous occasions. I had meetings with each of the 33 participants, discussing each of their projects and their hopes for the book.
Tradionally (due to costs) the students haven't ended up with many copies of their book - they mostly get sent out to galleries, editors and publications. So for this years publication, I was asked to create something which could be a book, but could also work as a small individual pamphlet for each student. Working closely with the printers Taylor Brothers we came up with a solution. We printed the book using 8 page sections (rather than the normal 16). This gave us a complete section for each artist. Which ment we could take out a bunch of indiviual sections before the final binding process that the students could then use a a small promotional device for themselves.
The content was comprised of 33 sections for the artists - in which they could display their photgraphs and smoe text talking about their work.
The publication was a soft back 250+ page book with a Spot UV finish on the lettering on the cover. We printed around 750 copies. These were distributed to select photography magazines, art critics and galleries. Some were also on sale at the Photographers Gallery, London, the Arnolfini, Bristol and the Ffotogallery, Cardiff.