Dr. Deb Littlejohn's GD 203 Book Design Investigation Assignment with Special Collections

Dr. Deb Littlejohn's GD 203 class will again be studying selected rare books in the Special Collections Research Center, in addition to some unique books in the Design Library. The Special Collections Research Center is looking forward to welcoming the students as they work on their assignment during the coming weeks.

Students will be posting their work to the new public WordPress blog by Oct 2nd: https://go.distance.ncsu.edu/gd203/

The assignment is as follows:

The title of your Post will be the title of the book. Half of your report should be about your personal experience with this publication (and is therefore subjective); the other half should be the result of research to answer questions about the history and importance of the publication (objective facts from history).



In the first (subjective) half of your essay, think and write about experiences such as:

  • What is my first visual impression of the artifact?
  • What is the physical nature of the artifact? Size, weight, binding, paper, etc.
  • How do I sense the artifact? Look, touch, smell, hear (don’t taste!)
  • What about the physical nature of the book interests me?
  • What is interesting about its design? Typography, images, cover, layout, printing techniques, binding, etc.

In the second (objective) half of your essay, research and answer some of these questions (all questions will not be pertinent to each publication, so choose which questions to address wisely):

  1. ALL of you must answer this question: Why is this artifact in the collection? Why is it important or special enough, to collect?
  2. What is this book valued for? (may be more than one thing) subject matter, author, design, age, writing, illustrations, printing, previous owners, where produced
  3. Is this artifact mentioned in books about the history of books and printing?
  4. How does this artifact fit in with history? Printing history, art/design history, history of a discipline, etc.
  5. Is this artifact an example of something special? A beginning, an end, an important innovation, etc.?
  6. Is this book part of the development of something?
  7. If there are important individuals involved in the making of this book – who are they?
  8. Is this artifact connected with any other artifact in the collection? In a series, by the same author? by the same designer? about the same subject? etc. Does this add to its importance?