Landscape as Witness - #4

Since submitting the first three chapters of my thesis, I have been able to spend more time working on the design of its corresponding photobook. In total I have created eight maquettes (or 'mock-ups'), enabling me to experiment with various fonts and layouts. The ratio of each maquette is just off 5:4,

as they have all been trimmed down slightly from the 10x8 format that they were originally printed in.

The first objective I had was to settle on a particular font to use, as quotations/ethnographic notes play such an important role throughout the entire body of work. I am currently drawn to 'Century Schoolbook' in its italicised form, which alludes to the educational element of the photobook. As well as this, the font isn't particularly invasive when viewed alongside the images. For similar reasons, I am considering using 'Palatino Linotype' for the captions.

I have also experimented with the idea of including scans of objects relating to the project, such as maps of the North Clare area that I have been using throughout the entire research process. An example of this can be seen below:

After working out a rough design, I am currently in the midst of organising the layout of the images themselves. For each maquette I used a relatively small selection of photographs, purely to speed up the design process and not to be held up too much by the juxtaposition of the images. However, I am now beginning to work on a more advanced maquette containing the final selection of images.

I plan to self-publish the completed photobook this year, hopefully with some aid from crowdfunding, and will be announcing more details about this in the near future.