Online Photobook - Classic Concepts

The Photobook - Classic Concepts and Layout Styles with Tim Daly (live seminar using Zoom)

This brand-new course is delivered online and is designed to inspire and help you to make a brand new photobook. If you’re planning a future photobook project, learn how best to transform your body of work into a more considered and coherent title. We’ll be looking at lots of great photographers, great photobooks and special publishers and learning how good design informs every step of the process. Useful for those with little or no design experience, the course will provide you with tips and techniques that you can apply to all layout software including Lightroom, BookWright and InDesign and to all book printing services including Blurb. You’ll also be provided with a big list of online photobook resources to use after the course has finished.

The workshop is run using Zoom video conferencing software and you will be able to watch and interact with your tutor during each topic presentation and ask questions throughout the day. All presentations and notes are provided to you before the event starts, together with tips on how to prepare for the course and use Zoom, if you’ve never used it before.

We encourage you to share questions and work in progress images with other delegates, although this is entirely optional.

10.00 Outline schedule

Welcome and outline of the day

Topic 1: Classic Photobook Concepts. Looking at acclaimed photobook examples across the different genres including travel, landscape, the street, people, eyewitness of an event and more. We’ll discover common threads and learn which photographers, photobooks and publishers can help inspire our future self-publishing projects.

Topic 2: How Your Concept Drives the Design Process. How do you turn a concept into a physical book? We’ll look at different case studies and see how other photographers have developed their own unique projects. Presenting a world of creative choices over physical book shapes and sizes, covers, printing methods, paper materials and clever finishing touches.

13.00 Lunch break

Topic 4: Eye-catching Layout Styles. In this part we’ll explore the layout styles of acclaimed photobooks and book designers such as Alexei Brodovitch, examining the techniques designers use to enhance original photography on the printed page. Lots of practical, hands-on advice to use in your next project.

Topic 5: Journal and Handmade Book Styles. Exploring the messy aesthetic of the diary-style photobook, including Peter Beard’s End of the Game, Bill Burke’s I Want To Take Picture and other stylish genre-defining works. Includes practical advice on scanning and incorporating handwriting, printed ephemera and flat objects into your books.

Recap of the day

16.00 End

Live seminar requirements:

A Mac or Windows computer or laptop with Internet access

A webcam or microphone for interacting (your laptop may have these built-in already)

Speakers to hear the presentations

You will need to install the Zoom app, but full instructions will be provided.

IMPORTANT

Please look out for the attachment in your confirmation email. If you don't receive it, please email learning@rps.org  

Tim will need access to your email address to enable him to send you a link to the class - we will presume that by booking this course you are giving permission unless you contact us to state otherwise. 

We will also be sending you the tutors email address, and all the links and info you will need once you have signed up. You will receive a Zoom invitation via email, the day before the lesson begins.

Overseas participants - Please check the time of the workshop if you are outside the UK. This link which will help you to calculate the timing of the online workshop: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/custom.html

The Tutor: Dr Tim Daly is Senior Lecturer in Photography at Chester University.

His specialist subjects are photography production and artist's publishing. Tim teaches on all levels of the BA Photography programme with special responsibility for practice based modules, and also contributes to the MA Fine Art programme. Tim has had many photography books published, and has been teaching RPS workshops for a number of years.