Design Context Books - The Making Of..

Will and I set up a bookbinding workshop in my room to bind both out context books in one fell swoop. The whole process went really well. I've learnt so much about book binding recently - and how to set up indesign documents for print - Which has been really useful as it's become apparent recently that I missed quite a lot when I didn't sign up for the print workshops last year.
I' really pleased with how these booklets turned out - though I'm a bit annoyed that I didnt find a reason to use either of my interviews from brand new or teabag studios.. Oh well!

In the end I decided to categorise these booklets by packaging, spatial and publication branding. My rationale states that I do not have a focus on any particular deliverable, and I realise that this may seem a little contradictory - however over the past few month I've realised that although I do not want to assign myself to any one particular outcome - these are the ones that hold the most interest for me, and the three of them together offer quite a broad perspective of the areas in which branding exists.

Design Context Books - Mock Up Books

Still figuring out how I'm going to bind these three books - Easiest way is obviously as a booklet, but I'm not sure how big they're going to get - so perfect bound is obviously a consideration.. though I've never perfect bound a book so I'll have to do a practice run first!

Design Context Books - Mock up spreads

Still trying to figure out a good way of categorising the areas of branding I'm looking at - I've always had some kind of focus on the culture sector - so I figure that's the best place to start.

Here are a few spread mock ups anyway - Just playing with context and layout at this stage.

Design Context Book.

So this is the first time in a while I've had a proper think about how I'm going to categorise the design context book - I say book, but I'm ot even sure of that either!

The above are the resulting notes from the discussion, and I just thought I'd take a few minutes to write them up in a logical order, so myself and other people can actually understand what the hell i'm talking about.

Concept
 - Branding, divided into what I see as the 4 main areas - Logo, Environmental, Range, Guidelines.
However I'm pretty certain these will change. Not happy about having logo on it's own, as there will no doubt be repetition through each category - This section will probably change to Print/Publication or something similar.

Content
- Each book will follow a similar structure - I need case studies, quotes, interviews and opinions of others to back up my own view. Each section will need an introduction, where I can state the purpose of the book/whatever it might be, as well as a practical 'how to' section, which will detail all the useful information I have gathered over the years - sizing, formats, colour palettes, finishes, stocks etc...

Format
 - Should be driven by the content, I am however quite set on the idea of having a set of publications of some kind that can be read in any order. This means the set of books (or whatever!) will be interpreted differently depending on which order they are read, thus resulting in a fresh opinion or inspiration to go away with each time.

Considerations
- The format and design should reflect the content where possible.
- It must be easy to navigate and understand.
- Who is involved in this industry?
- Define branding/corporate identity.
- Propose questions, I don't have to answer everything.
- Define a target audience
- Include limitations, I cannot include everything on this topic.