Part 1 UNDERSTAND
Using the given content you will need to suggest a narrative structure to form a new book design. For this stage, you will need to fully digest the content and form a sketchbook of research and ideas.
– Consider ways of communicating key aspects from the content through the publication/book design
– Consider how the publication can be seen as a curated space
– Think about the tone of voice of your given content how this might be reflected within your design
John Cooper Clarke- Beasley Street
Far from crazy pavements
The taste of silver spoons
A clinical arrangement
On a dirty afternoon
Where the fecal germs of Mr Freud
Are rendered obsolete
The legal term is “null and void”
In the case of Beasley Street
In the cheap seats where murder breeds
Somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don’t need
A sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
On the edge of Beasley Street
Where the action isn’t
That’s where it is
State your position
Vacancies exist
In an X-certificate exercise
Ex-servicemen excrete
Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
In a box on Beasley Street
From the boarding-houses and the bedsits
Full of accidents and fleas
Somebody gets it
Where the missing persons freeze
Wearing dead men’s overcoats
You can’t see their feet
A riff joint shuts, opens up
Right down on Beasley Street
Cars collide, colours clash
Disaster-movie stuff
For a man with a Fu Manchu moustache
Revenge is not enough
There’s a dead canary on a swivel seat
There’s a rainbow in the road
Meanwhile on Beasley Street
Silence is the code
Hot beneath the collar
An inspector calls
Where the perishing stink of squalor
Impregnates the walls
The rats have all got rickets
They spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on Beasley Street
The hipster and his hired hat
Drive a borrowed car
Yellow socks and a pink cravat
Nothing, la-dee-dah
OAP, mother-to-be
Watch the three-piece suite
When shit-stoppered drains
And crocodile skis
Are seen on Beasley Street
The kingdom of the blind
A one-eyed man is king
Beauty problems are redefined
The doorbells do not ring
A lightbulb bursts like a blister
The only form of heat
Here a fellow sells his sister
Down the river on Beasley Street
The boys are on the wagon
The girls are on the shelf
Their common problem is
That they’re not someone else
The dirt blows out
The dust blows in
You can’t keep it neat
It’s a fully furnished dustbin
Sixteen Beasley Street
Vince the ageing savage
Betrays no kind of life
But the smell of yesterday’s cabbage
And the ghost of last year’s wife
Through a constant haze
Of deodorant sprays
He says retreat
Alsations dog the dirty days
Down the middle of Beasley Street
People turn to poison
Quick as lager turns to piss
Sweethearts are physically sick
Every time they kiss
It’s a sociologist’s paradise
Each day repeats
On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy
Beastly Beasley Street
Eyes dead as vicious fish
Look around for laughs
If I could have just one wish
I would be a photograph
On a permanent Monday morning
Get lost or fall asleep
When the yellow cats are yawning
Around the back of Beasley Street
“Beasley Street” is a poem by the English poet John Cooper Clarke. Dealing with poverty in inner-city Salford in the Britain of Margaret Thatcher, Cooper Clarke has said that the poem was inspired by Camp Street in Lower Broughton. It has a relentless theme of squalor and despair:
The rats have all got rickets
They spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on Beasley Street
The neighborhood mentioned in this poem does not actually exist, but this is the situation of the slums in the 1980s. The street is full of darkness, despair and violence.
Part 2 PLAY
From the work undertaken in the Understand stage, you must work out a plan to design this into a new book form. Be playful and have fun, it’s really about your creative ideas at this stage.
– Consider how your given narrative can be expressed through your layout and visual design choices
– Consider the most appropriate channels and tools to activate your content
Part 3 AMPLIFY
Create the final publication. You will be assessed on the appropriateness of your output and how this has been elevated beyond the original static content as well as your overall craft skills in presenting the final design.
Cover: Color gradients and distorted lines are the main elements of the cover like a flame ignited from the middle and want to break free from the shackles, representing the distorted social reality and the status quo that the oppressed people at the bottom have to seek survival in society, that is the story of Beasley street
Folding: When you open the cover of the book, you can see from the colorful world to the black and white geometric lines, forming a strong contrast. The black and white contrast is like light and shadow. The front is like walking into Beasley street through scattered architectural lights and shadows in an afternoon, and the back Represents the elapsed time, which is also the reason why this part is to be three-dimensional.
Page-turning: The first page of the book is still a continuation of the color gradients element. The distorted but invisible flame is burning. The fuzzy feeling of sulfuric acid paper is like the moment when you just walked into this street. The world has changed from pure to dirty, from order to chaos, from rich to poor, from expensive to cheap, making it difficult to distinguish whether the outside world is fictional or real. Chaos and distortions are all over here, sleep, food, clothes, entertainment, sexual desire, drugs, and even life and death have become indifferent and unimportant. The inner pages are mainly composed of cool gradients, deconstructed graphics, and black and white lines to express my feelings. The final darkness leaves readers unlimited imagination space
