Book du jour - "Route"

The college has a great letterpress facility and I was thinking of giving it a go ... but after spending all (all!) of Sunday on the computer making an eight-page book(let), I'm having second thoughts. Every page needed a thousand, or million, typographical and layout decisions - and attentive checking, not least of the list of streets against the atlas.

12 iterations later, it might be nearly there (but while uploading these photos, I've seen two further things that need correction).

Random inside pages - from versions 1, 2, 7, 9 - in some versions you could start at either the front or the back, then turn the book upside down and read it in the other direction

At one point I found myself moving a block of text 0.15 cm (would the technical term be a smidgen, or a tad?) to get it perfectly aligned on the page..... there is great danger of getting toooo fussy, of not knowing when to stop.

But the point about letterpress, or rather this little exercise, is that I have a greater respect for the skills of book designers and the patience of typographers!

About a year ago I had the idea to map some car journeys Tony (and I) make repeatedly. Finally it's happened.

I traced the route for the weekly grocery shopping from the A-Z -- not a long route, but it fell on several pages of the book; at least it fit easily on an A4 sheet.

Home is at lower left, Finchley Road on the right. The book lists the side streets in order, with "directions for travel" interspersed - location of traffic lights, when to turn left and when to turn right.

Because of the "organic" way roads evolved in England, there can be more sideroads on one side - so the directions to turn right, or whatever, fall at different points on the page

The route map literally stretches across the centre page, between parking the car and setting off on the return journey

Again because of the eccentric evolution of the city, one list is longer than the other

So the words give a different picture from the map - they are more like the "map" that a nomad might carry around - a nomad's map might be a story-menomic or even a song, or might depend on recognising certain natural features, perhaps the shape of hills on the skyline.

Without words on the map, and as it is a route without a context, my map is hardly "modern". Yet you could find your way from A to B simply by counting the side streets, and turning where shown.

There are implications for gender differences in map reading and navigation. I vaguely remember a tv programme where the people who were given verbal directions for getting through a maze did better than those who were given a map, and the programme also dealt with gender differences. 

There's a basic contradiction, a "reading difficulty": In the list, the roads that go off to the left are on the left side, and those that go off to the right are on the right side of the spread. But put yourself in the car. You are travelling forward - left to right, in this case - but you are reading "backward", ie down the page, away from the direction of travel.

This idea of showing the left side and right side of the road comes from coaching maps - for example this one from 1782 - which shows mileage and turn-offs between Melton Mowbray and Wakefield. These maps operated on a simple premise - when you are in the coach, the road stretches out in a straight line before you. Thus a map could be shown as a basically straight line, showing towns and landmarks passed en route. You start at bottom left and read up and over.

Now I'm thinking of how this fits into my "journey lines" project....

The idea resurfaced because the Road Rug is now finished -

The rug started as a fanciful compilation of parts of "real routes" - car journeys to the DIY store, to the grocery store(s), to various museums and galleries. Often there are roundabouts and other intersections, and often the route has a way there and a different route back, making a loop -

I chopped up an overlaid these for the design of the rug.


With the rug finished, and having read and thought about maps in the meantime, I decided to revisit the routes and finally make a book... and then to tell the story in the most jumbled way possible....