I visited Waterstones flagship store in Piccadilly, on a research trip; looking at visual styles, and layout techniques.
Biographies
I started in the auto/biographical section, as I felt the factual information given through a biographical account, with photo pages, would make a good point of reference for the memories of London shared through my questionnaire.
I was visually interested in appearance of the David Bowie section, which was set up like a shrine, and included different books, and records.
‘Coffee Table’, Non-Fiction
Moving on I went to a section of (what I would class as) coffee-table books, and looked at the way listed information was presented alongside simple, mostly black ink, illustrations.
I like the covers of these types of books – they feel quite fairytale inspired, or as if the information in the book is old; the covers have a classical feel to them.
Art & Photography
Next I found myself in the Art & Photography section – which I had been aiming for initially. There were lots of different books of course, but most seemed to be formatted in a similar, simplistic style with large images on the page and small text. A clear, neat, and favourite (of mine), example of this, was in Banksy: The Prints, by Roberto Campolucci-Bordi.
I like Banksy’s work in general, and feel the book’s style suited the artist – including the brown, recycled paper, cover aesthetic. I like the sort-of nod to sustainability, and eco-practices that the artist also would support.
In terms of content, I was particularly enamoured with the photographs of William Eggleston, documented in the book The Last Dyes. What attracted me to the photographs was the quality of them, the waxy appearance of subjects (similar to how I saw Nan Goldin’s subjects in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency), the exposure of each image, and the vibrant colours that felt to pop out of the pages. I also appreciated the completely blank space around each displayed photograph – letting the images themselves, very effectively, do the talking.
Although I can appreciate work displayed in this way, as a personal preference I love the sharing of information – both as a viewer and a creative myself. Even if the references themselves are unknown to me, I enjoy putting names to faces, and dates on places. I think for the purpose of archiving it’s relatively important to display information with images. At least I find it satisfying to see a well laid out, but informative spread in front of me when reading or looking at non-fiction.
With this in mind, I really enjoyed Sophia Coppola’s Archive, and the various presentations of information and photography. It felt like looking through an extensive mood board of ideas from a fixed timeframe, (stated at the beginning of the book this was 1999-2023). As much as it felt like an archive of different media materials, it felt like a passion-project; personally crafted to remember particular times and experiences had.
This ‘flattening of moments’, or the physical immortalisation of experiences – shown in Sophia Coppola’s Archive through use of diagrams, maps, photographs, notes, etc – is something I’m particularly interested in, and keep my own scrapbooks for this purpose.
I think I would like to have a handcrafted element to whatever I create, rather than a digitally produced piece of artwork that would represent the memory shared. This is something I have come to realise since my trip to Waterstones. I’m keen to play around with hand-drawing or painting onto / around photos, and / or collaging, before scanning the images back into a document.
Another book that caught my eye was Ultimate Anime, by Joe O’Connell. I’m not a super-anime-fan, however I am familiar with some illustrative techniques, and concepts, commonly used in Manga. Again, I liked the combination and balance of text and images across each spread. I also really liked how thick the book itself was – it felt like a very in-depth guide, and would no doubt be of great interest, and excitement, to any hardcore, underground, Anime fan. A visual element I really liked were symbols – unfortunately I didn’t catch what they each represented, but it may be a technique I borrow for my own documentation project/s.
The last book I took from these shelves, was a book called London Interiors, which I mostly felt drawn to look at for my personal tastes – I like architecture of the home, and interior design to a degree. The book contained satisfying page layouts, however, nothing I felt I hadn’t yet seen. If anything – it further encouraged me to consider a minimalist layout for my archive – if it isn’t in a video format anyway.
Cookery Books
Whilst I was over in this section, I’d been taking books from the shelves and photographing them on top of other books, when it occurred to me that the cook-books beneath would also have ways of providing information visually, or in a potentially interesting, or unconsidered way. I looked through quite a few different cookery books; my favourites were Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients – with his obvious neon/ number branding that I have seen in other books of his also, and Ottolenghi’s Simple, which I was drawn to based on the title and the reputation of the chef himself.
I liked the use of colour in both of these books, and the symbols, and tables with helpful/ essential information. I preferred the use of more pictures in Jamie Oliver’s book, particularly because of the subject – I think personally I’d like to ensure what I cooked looked right (maybe because I’m also in no way comfortable in a kitchen).
The last cookery book I glanced at was The Silver Spoon, which I was drawn to because of its size (huge) and that it looked to me like a Culinary Bible. Inside was a bit underwhelming, but seemed to get straight to the point with categorised sections, simple, Swiss-grid style page layouts, and randomly interspersed symbols, with some photo pages here and there. I thought the contents seemed more overly-intimidating than the cover and size of the book – though can understand the no-nonsense, anthological appeal to having a book such as this (if one was into cooking… and had lots of sturdy, shelf space).
‘London’ Section
Finally, I managed to drag myself away from that area of Waterstones Piccadilly, and walked straight into another metaphorical gold mine – the London books section!
The first book I opened over here was A Walk in London by Salvatore Rubbino; the first page I opened it to was about St Paul’s Cathedral – which seemed fitting, as one of my questionnaire responses details a memory at St Pauls. Again, I like the hand-drawn/ cut-out aesthetic to the illustrations – it looks like someone’s personal project and a visual recollection of a memory that’s perhaps a little faded now – again, apt for my purpose as the response about St Paul’s I received was dated the 1950s.
A few other books had the same illustrative, cut-out, style – I liked the colours used in these pages of This is London by M. Sasek, as well as the simple, sans-serif typeface on the off-white page which I felt gives the book a vintage feel in combination with the quirky, but detailed illustrations.
I enjoy the ‘old’ aesthetic when documenting London – often opting to record video in a grainy, or faded film quality style. I enjoy old, black and white, documentary footage of London from the early 20th century, usually narrated by a man, with a clipped, RP accent.
My favourite book from this section was London Underground 1970-1980 by Mike Goldwater – which featured lots of pictures taken of/ on the tube or at London Underground stations throughout that decade. All the photographs were in black and white, which I liked the aesthetic of, and the page layout was simple, one, landscape oriented image per spread, with a written detail of what station, and year, the photograph was taken in.
Although I did like the more varied shots in London: Portrait of a City, by Reuel Golden, I was much less keen on the layout, and what felt to me, like a lack of continuity throughout the book. I also felt the quotes on some of the pages were a little unnecessary, and detracted from the images themselves.
So finally, we come to the last book I looked at (in Waterstones, that day) – Tired of London, Tired of Life, a sentiment that resonates with me often – I love London and there really aren’t many days when I don’t feel that way.
I like the premise of this book – One thing a day to do in London for a year. Some pages have more than one date’s activity displayed on them, I like this varied approach to the layout. I also enjoyed the loose illustration style throughout the book, and the simple one, or two colours used per page. My favourite aspects of this book were the tabs on the edges of each page – I like the organisational elements that make things easier to locate/ navigate.
