Obsolescence
– Project nameObsolescence
– RoleBook designer
– DateSpring 2025
– SpecsAbobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
– Paper
‘Florentine’ by Jemma Lewis, 100gsm (Endpaper)
For this project, I had the ablity to set my own brief in relation to books. Obsolescence is a series of books that explores architecture decade-by-decade. In this edition the focus is on London, going from the centre to the North, East, South and West – starting from the 1950s and going forward in time to the 2020s. Each book documents
a different city, starting from the 1950s to now.
London loses thousands of buildings each year. The sole purpose of Obsolescence is to document architecture in the event that it gets demolished for generations in the future to read. All types of architecture are covered from modernist to brutalist, to capture the true identity of each decade.
LocationsAfter selecting the topic of architecture in London, I began the journey of designing my book by finding an average of four buildings from each decade (from the 1950s – the 2020s).
I achieved this by using the internet, finding blogs and websites primarily written by architecture enthusiasts. I compiled each building that I felt best encapsulated it’s decade in the following lists. When walking around London, I carried these lists with me whilst referencing my map. This allowed me to target individual buildings and identify their location more effectively.
1950sGolden Lane Estate
219 Oxford Street
Stockwell Bus Garage
Keeling House
1960s
BT tower
Churchill gardens
Smithson plaza
One Kemble street space house
1970s
Shakespeare tower
Trellick tower
Alexandra road park estate
Southbank Centre complex and National Theatre
1980s
Shadwell basin tower hamlets
Swedish quays 1-95 rope street
China wharf 29 mill street
Belvoir estate Islington 1 Marie gardens
1990s
One Canada square
The cobalt building
Perceval house Ealing
SIS building
Minster court
2000s
The gherkin
Willis building
Whitechapel idea store
40 bank street
West India Quay
2010
The shard
25 Churchill place
Heron tower 110 Bishop street
Landmark pinnacle
Walkie Talkie
2020
The scalpel 52–54 lime street
Harcourt Tower
One the Elephant
One Thames Quay
Binding
When binding my book, I used a variation of coptic sewing. I chose this method of binding so that the book could lay flat on the table to allow the viewer to be immersed in the book’s wide format – this would not be possible had I chosen a non-sewing method such as perfect binding, which is bound purely using glue. I created four signatures (sections) which were comprised of four folded sheets of paper. The brown thread compliments the brown cover of the book.
Masthead
To make the masthead, I looked at ephemera from the 19th century stored within the special collections within the department of Typography & Graphic Communication printed using woodtype. I wanted the typography featured on the front cover of book to be set using ‘dead’ typefaces that are no longer available to match the ‘obsolete’ conventions of the book The ephemera primarily consisted of posters and booklets advertising things or warning viewers. After I had individually scanned all 34 pieces of ephemera, I decided to print them out to not only judge their scale, but find the best pairings between characters. Due to the word obsolescence being comprised of 12 characters, I therefore had to find 12 characters from the pieces of ephemera to spell out the word when combined. I achieved this by circling each character I wanted to be present in the masthead, visualising what each one would look like next to
each other.
Once I had selected 12 individual characters from the pieces of ephemera I roughly arranged the letters together to create the lock-up that I wanted. I then removed the background around each character using the magic wand tool in Photoshop once I was satisfied with the lock-up. To compliment the black and white photographs throughout the book, I converted the masthead to grey-scale, making the masthead ready to be placed into the prelims within my book.
Masthead applicationThis was my attempt at making a polymer plate for my book. This specific plate was going to print the masthead present on the front cover of the book, but unfortunately it was not successful due to the water not hitting the surface of the plate at a high enough pressure to transfer the detail inherent to the characters (I could not increase the pressure of the water any further). When making the negative (pictured top left) I ensured that I made all of the detail present inside of each character lighter to maximise the contrast between the contours and the structure of the letter itself. When burning the negative onto the plate, the detail did not transfer effectively enough, which meant that the letters appeared as ‘blobs’, without any distinguishable detail, which rendered the masthead as unusable.
Book clothAt this stage, once I had successfully sewn and glued all of the pages in my book together, it was time to start gluing the book-cloth to the book-board. I cut out three pieces of book-board to scale; one for the front cover, back cover and spine. I allowed for space on either side of the spine to create hinges, making the book more compliant to being opened and closed.
EndpaperTo connect the text-block to the cover of the book I had to utilise my two sheets of end-paper. I started by gluing the first sheet into the front of the book, putting a large sheet of parchment paper under it, naturally spreading the PVA glue onto it when applying glue to the bottom of the end-paper; I repeated this process for the end-paper at the back of the book too, successfully connecting the text-block to the cover, holding it in place.
Chapter dividersFrom the inception of this project I wanted to have acetate separating each chapter in the book to add to the tactility of the reading experience. I laser-printed the appropriate, corresponding chapter number and associated date onto eight sheets (for eight chapters). I applied the sheet via PVA glue running down the inside of the margin of the book. To accommodate for this, I made the fold of the sheet 20mm wide to not disrupt and cover up the type and images on the page.