Month: April 2026

TUTORIAL NOTES 300426

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MAIN TUTORIAL

– RING BINDER a good durable choice for schools environment, may need to compromise curved edges.

Deconstruct it and see what happens.

Stamp on the front only? What about blurb, could this act as a VISA or boarding card?

Binder is a good way of housing it. Has to be durable for kids.

 – Passport front cover – maybe the usual cover is too heavy now? Just bring in the passport undertones and use them judiciously in the publication where appropriate. This doesn’t need to be a gimmick.

– Spreads – Riso? Bring that back in, make a booking for week after next? Duotone printing. It might giver everything a visual complexity, consistency between varied content and then printed flat. Perhaps lean into the more loos layout, overlays etc.

– BOARDING CARD in there, hole punched, with the 

– REFERENCE FROM MATTHEW – Perambulation Riso printed walking tours. Map, locations etc.

– LEARNING HIERARCHY discussed. ‘Must, many and some’.

– ACCESSIBILITY can be dubious, reality is that there isn’t a universal approach in education, therefore visual engagement is important. Be captivated by the visuals, cook someone in from that. Be creative with the typography, type thematically close.

– TYPEFACE REFERENCE – Abyme  foundry, Axo typeface. Interesting history in handwriting and letterforms found in school manuals, technical drawings, architectural plans. Reach out to them for license.

Axo

– Discussed tabbing system of James Goggin work, won’t work here, kids will not file in order, but we can add or serialize the folders.

– REWARD SYSTEM is good, keep the stamping, What would the teacher’s stamp say? Just design one stamp for them. Maybe ‘You’ve arrived!’

– Don’t use passport for front cover, too on the nose, that could be a stamp itself?

– TESTING – with teachers etc, local families again. How many copies would I need to make?

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MINI READER:

– Intellectual engagement

– Work with text, but also bring in quotes from kids, interviews etc

– Cover, back cover, marginalia.

– Cover design – ‘Where are the missing pieces of the Parthenon, Daddy?’

– Sequential

– Keshavarz reference – add a chapter behind it, do this for all of them. e.g. Sanghera, use classroom chapter at the end? Opportunity for deeper engagement.

– You don’t have to annotate this? The other writing will be personal enough?

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ACTIONS POINTS:

– Get stuck into at least two booklets for next week to nail down visual direction

– Reach out to ABYME for temporary font license.

– Consider ring binder, commission stamps? What could the stamp be for the teacher?

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EXTRA IDEAS:

– Tip in a spoofed boarding card containing instructions?

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DRAFT ABSTRACT

PRESENTATION

TUTORIAL NOTES 230426

– ‘Are there any other locations apart from a school where you could circulate this material?’

Consider a library if school doesn’t work. If nothing came from the school, it could work. 

What conditions would that bring? 

– ‘You don’t; need to see what you do here and single, standalone projects… it might have another extended life. Imagine this existing in a school and then the same principles or spirit then being pushed through to a library’. Children go, free resource.

– Design – by removing guilloché, makes it much simpler. Inconsistencies with column width because of time (just a day spent designed the rest of the week researching and writing).  3 spreads for each good. Structure discussed (THEN, NOW etc). Add in intro to parents, consider front and end matter down the line, introductory statement and glossary.

– Activities – shared breakfast reference! Kids will go find object and ask questions about it, can this go deeper? 

– User testing after you see the schools – see the teachers and then get it in front of kids. 

– FORMAT – look at splitting the five items into separate publications? To create one whole one?

Could there be a follow up? Building on these ideas? Could the items link somehow? Could they be linked somehow? Not using narrative. The item could be separated out, one a week. Should we drip feed the content? Passport as a folder, mini publications within it, bitesize chunks. It allows us to go deeper in two the objects as well. Structural decision there.

– End on a cliffhanger at the end of one book, link the book with the copy, some kind of narrative? ‘Next time we’ll be collecting something really sweet’. Could they document the journey of one object?

– Kids could investigate the objects themselves, let the objects speak back to them. Could it be more sensory, howdies it smell, open the pack and pour it? 

– Could the text be based on how a kid would find out about the items themselves? From their point of view?

– 5 mini publications, making up one big one. 

(Could this be a treasure hunt IN the library? Kids find the object, fill in the passport)

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ACTION POINTS

1 – See teachers, confirm appointments and ask about user testing.

2 – New iteration based on that feedback

3 – Testing and evaluation, school or library or families I know socially,

TUTORIAL NOTES 160426

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BRIEFING K205 10AM

– Production Surgery w/c 27/4, extra day in London

– Make time for final photography of project before Show in June, worth at least using the library facilities.

– Project the enquiry into a different direction? What can I change about it? DIfferent format, audience, whatever. Can I project INWARDLY, change the guts of the publication. Zoom in.

– WRITING. X 2. Mini reader CONTEXTUALISES your work.

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MAIN TUTORIAL K201A 2PM

– Tutor agrees on route 1. Reworked publication for publication through a school as a piece of homework, in a shared learning space, taking in all the feedback from testing and various sources

Strength of this project will come when you meet the conditions  that it will be published within. How would you upscale this from 5 test cases to a class of 30, 60…a nation. It becomes an economic thing. Go back to it, audience is confirmed. How do I now get it into the hands of that audience, them taking it home and having conversations with parents about these particular themes and issues. That movement into it being a real project, over a localized, small setting, is when it starts to take real shape. The project could have different lives. Step 1, getting it into kids and parents via the school. Then, it could grow and build into an exhibition later in life, or for older/younger demographics. Imagine it existing, making it exist in the world, then it lives and it can turn into other things. Dictated by this start.

You have a visual style emerging and the content, now THROUGH the school, the context, what are the limitations going to be? How is that visual language going to adapt or change, crystalline? The next question is going o the school and asking about the conditions and limitations, and using that as a the building blocks to work from. 

Interview stakeholders to appraise it from their perspective. Execution will happen after that. Aim for second half of May to get this out to kids through the school is possible. Can it work? Let them take the lead, may not be possible.

Spoke about paper in kids’ homework, do mine come with material like this?

Discussed paper nature of it. Is there a web presence? Could I put in QR codes that could take you to further learning and encourage further depth? A set of links to help the kids and me to help the legal parameters that are present in this. Would this turn out to be kind of guerrilla?

How would you cost this? Charitable organizations? Worth investigating.

Lo-fi, economic hat on when producing would be the assumption. 

Summary – speak to the school in the next stage, using very practical questions of them, and then from there what are the material parameters than can translate the current iteration into the next one.

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ACTION POINTS

– Emailed local school, Oakfield Academy (again), to ask for review of the publication and what issues would need to consider either theoretically or for actual release within the school. This needs to be quick!

– Start a new iteration of the publication, taking in all the previous feedback but also building in the online strand to it, the letter to parents. This will at least start the making in advance of hearing from the school.

– Look around yourself for references and advice, government or academic, on what kind of thing works in this context, maybe there are some details or approaches I can glean and use to guide the next stages. 

– Plan, if you can, the next month

– Investigate funding of this for further steps, perhaps after MA.

– Start ABSTRACT, 200 word draft for next week.

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