Creating a Clothings Ration Book Gallery Guide

For my second piece I used the idea of the Clothing Ration book, but decided to turn it into a Gallery Guide book, showing the contents of the exhibition and information about the pieces. I chose this because I thought that the ration book was already in the form of a book and was a convenient size that would translate well into a Gallery Guide. I started by buying a replica of a clothing ration book so I had a base to work on. I first scanned it into the computer and then printed it out in black and white. This was so I could find out how big or how small it would print when I put two pages to one sheet of paper. Fortunately I found that this printed out at the right size, and I planned to continue in this size, but in colour.

 

After printing out all of my chosen pages in chose and cartridge paper and sticking then all together in the correct order, I discovered that the scanner I used had two black marks on it that can be seen on each of the pages printed. This, I thought made the booklet look dirty, although they needed to look old; I did not want these black marks on the paper. This meant that I had to re-scan and re-print all of my pages.

After re-scanning and re-printing, I successfully stuck together and organised my chosen pages. I decided to use the front cover pages as a place in which to put the information about the exhibition using the same stamping technique I used in the telegram piece. I stamped the name, place, and date in the corresponding boxes on the front page. I then used the first ration token page to print the word ‘Contents’ onto the top of the page, this actual contents can be printed at a later date in the same technique. For the final page with stamping on I printed the word ‘Notes’ this is so the people who use the book can make notes on their favourite pieces, or of an artist they discover.