Books are one of the great and enduring means of communicating culture, and in the technological and communication revolution of the last couple of decades, what a book can be has changed, and the form of the book has flourished. Books are weirder and more interesting right now than they've ever been. In Making Pages, we will investigate contemporary small press publishing from theoretical and practical perspectives, and we will learn about books by designing and producing books. We will also have a stall at the NGV Art Book Fair, during which we will run a project and get to know a community of publishers and book makers.

In this studio you will learn a variety of ways of thinking about and approaching the making of books. You will learn about books and publishing from historical, technical, pragmatic and speculative points of view. You will also learn about book typography, the construction of grids and books as systems.

Books always create links; between a reader, an author, an editor, other books, to name just a few. In this studio you will need to design for these audiences, and early in the semester you will meet and communicate with your community of practice at the NGV Art Book Fair.

Over the course of the semester you will design and produce (at least) three books. In some instances you will also be authoring content or collecting and curating content. You will need to be willing to work in unconventional ways and develop historically and theoretically informed ways of working. This studio will predominantly be run in studio, where we will discuss, design, critique and produce books. We will occasionally use Stuart's external studio and book production workshop, but we will be using outsourced production also. There will be guest lectures, field trips and weekly readings to discuss.

There will be three assessment tasks in this studio, each one will involve you making a different kind of book. AT1: Book as investigation/documentary AT2: Book as speculation AT3: Book as critical archive (SKO)

Books Make Friends, Letter from Christoph Keller to Roger Willems: http://www.dextersinister.org/MEDIA/PDF/KellerLetter.pdf Self-publishing: Graphic Designers as Editors, Florine Bonaventure (intro): http://ma-ad.ch/thesis/self-publishing-graphic-designers-as-editors/

We will be participating in the NGV Art Book Fair on the weekend of March 15–17. We will have a stall at the fair for the weekend, during which we will run a project and get to know a community of publishers and book makers.

Designing Identity, Designing through Image, Designing Publications, Designing Disobedience