Nowruz Mubarek!

It's been awhile since the last time I updated my blog, I've been blown away by the overwhelming world after I stepped out of my college life. Traveled a bit then settled down in Guangzhou for a year until now. I'm home now, my great-cultural home where I used to give all my heart to. All I felt was depression at the beginning of my extended visit, gradually I'm all about joy for each single minute of my time here. The first thing I'm proud of is the greatest hometown where I come from, Urumqi, Xinjiang, the biggest province of whole China. Its histories and culture fascinate me.

Today is a brand new day of a year, the reason why I continue my blog on this meaningful day, firstly I'd like to congratulate everyone who celebrates Nowruz - Nowruz Mubarak! Nowruz (Persian: نوروز‎‎; [nouˈɾuːz]; literally "New Day") is the name of the Iranian New Year also refered to as Persian New Year, which is celebrated worldwide by Iranian peoples, along with some other ethno-linguistic groups. 

Also called	Albanian: Novruzit Azerbaijani: Novruz Georgian: ნავრუზი – Navruzi Gujarati: નવરોઝ – Navarōjha Kazakh: Наурыз – Nawrız Kurdish: Newroz‎ Kyrgyz: Нооруз – Nooruz Ossetian: Новруз – Novruz Tajik: Наврӯз – Navrūz Turkish: Nevruz Uzbek: Navruz

The first day on the Iranian calendar falls on the March equinox, the first day of spring, around 20 March. At the time of the equinox, the sun is observed to be directly over the equator, and the north and south poles of the Earth lie along the solar terminator; sunlight is evenly divided between the north and south hemispheres. In around the 11th century CE major reforms of the Iranian calendars took place and whose principal purpose were to fix the beginning of the calendar year, i.e. Nowrūz, at the vernal equinox. Accordingly, the definition of Nowruz given by the Iranian scientist Ṭūsī was the following: "the first day of the official new year [Nowruz] was always the day on which the sun entered Aries before noon".

Nowruz is celebrated in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Black Sea basin, the Balkans, and by Iraniansworldwide. It is a public holiday in Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Albania, Kosovo, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Also the Canadian parliament by unanimous consent, has passed a bill to add Nowruz to the national calendar of Canada, on March 30, 2009.

Other notable celebrations take place by Iranians around the world, such as Los Angeles, Toronto, Cologne and in United Kingdom, mainly in London. But because Los Angeles is prone to devastating fires, there are very strict fire codes in the city. No fires are allowed even on one's own property. Usually, Iranians living in Southern California go to the beaches to celebrate the event where it is permissible to build fires. On 15 March 2010, The United States House of Representatives passed The Nowruz Resolution (H.Res. 267), by a 384–2 vote, "Recognizing the cultural and historical significance of Nowruz, ... .".

Nowruz in my hometown is pretty much a big celebration, it is celebrated by different kinds of minorities such as Uyghur, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tatar etc. It is equal to the spring festival celebration among the majority of Han Chinese people. Nowruz means a start of a spring season, it is time for spring production in the rural areas.

I'm so glad to finally keep updating my blog, and continue exploring the vast knowledge of the world that I live in. I've been home for a couple of month now, I feel great and even better overall, depression and insomnia devoured me when I lived in Guangzhou, I thought I lost my mind again like the darkest time of my life iterated. I needed psychiatric help, so there I decided to abandon Guangzhou and booked a flight back home as if I was on a journey to find my Yoda for help and instructions. My mom has always been for me, she's been my personal therapist/psychiatrist since the day I was mentally damaged by the series of events that had to destroy me. I feel so much brighter now and try to enjoy each minute and second of my life. 

I'm personally celebrating a brand new me as well as celebrating a brand new day of the year. Let me conclude this post with a photoset that I have been taking since I came back home.

Reference

1.  "Culture of Iran: No-Rooz, The Iranian New Year at Present Times". www.iranchamber.com. Retrieved 2016-02-01.
2.  R. Abdollahy, Calendars ii. Islamic period, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. 4, London-Newyork, 1990.
3.  "Canada parliament recognizes 'Nowruz Day'". PRESS TV. 3 April 2009. Retrieved 20 March 2015.
4.  "BBCPersian.com". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
5. Jump up ^ "Novruz... Celebration That Would Not Die". Azer.com. 1990-03-13. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
6. Jump up ^ House Passes Historic Norooz (sic) Resolution, National Iranian American Council, Monday, 15 March 2010.

Task 6: Review and Enhancement

Advanced Professional Practice subject had given me opportunities to enhance myself and develop a more professional personality, I was chosen to be the leader of the entire class, it was time consuming and it was really difficult to be the leader nor the student president, but ultimately I am glad to take the chance to be a leader, I can't say that I'm a great leader, but I have practiced myself to be one. There are a lot of things that I expect myself to do better and I'm still working on to achieve and enhance.

During completing and working on different tasks, I have found my way of exploring myself in a way to understand myself better. I collected different feedbacks, advises and suggestions from different lecturers and classmates then to analyse them on purpose to find a way to develop a better and more efficient work, I critique what I do and what I work on based on the feedbacks I get from people and find a best solution with brain storm by combining different suggestions and advises from people. 

Throughout the entire subject, I had created my work mostly in Adobe CS softwares and iWork apps of Apple. I had read and researched on many tips of editing and the basic design awareness such as the Bleeding lines, create outlines, margin line, the dpi matters and etc. I have also practiced myself on writing formal documents throughout the subject as well, mostly I work with iWork apps from Apple. 

I have dealt with the manager of Publika shopping mall to confirm the exhibition space, it wasn't the first time for me to deal with people outside the college, so I had a confidence of doing so without problems of fears, and eventually I had gained the information what we needed to book the exhibition space with no problems. Curation of an exhibition is a lot of works to do, it needs the people who work for it with the most hardworking attitude, ultimately it will eventually end up to be a happy ending.

During the curation of the exhibition, we have designed flyers that informs the publics about our exhibition and we have also created a public Facebook event as the internet information stands a big part of our time, we spread ourselves though internet and the traditional way - the flyers.  

We had a lot of meet ups in the studio and a lot of discussions about our exhibition to create the best exhibition curation within a team, the team work we had wasn't the best and most efficient, but we'd always end up solving the problems with our brain storms.

Book Project: 坏, Corrupted.

As I have planned for this graduate art project to create a book that contains the artworks that I produce throughout this entire project. Before doing it, I have researched on different methods of book binding and considered different types of book binding to create this book.

Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper or other material. It usually involves attaching a book cover to the resulting text-block. Before the computer age, the bookbinding trade involved two divisions. 

Some of the more popular Book Binding methods include: 

1) Saddle Stitching.  This softbound binding method is one of the most simple and widely used binding styles. Saddle Stitched books are constructed from folded sheets that are held together by staples driven through the crease of the fold. For example, a Saddle Stitched book that measures 8.5″ x 11″ when closed is constructed from 17″ x 11″ sheets that have been folded in half.  Saddle Stitching is the least expensive book binding method and works well for programs, wall calendars, booklets, newsletters, pamphlets and direct mailers.

http://www.paperchase.net/products/softcover-books/attachment/04_smythe_sewn685x489/

http://www.formateditions.co.uk/services/knowledge/stitched-bindings/#1

2) Perfect Binding.  The soft cover books that fill the shelves at bookstores are good examples of perfect bound books. The spine is square and usually printed upon. Also, the cover is generally made from paper stock that is heavier than the interior pages. With the perfect binding method, the book’s pages and cover are glued together at the spine with strong yet flexible glue. Then the three open sides of the book are trimmed to give them sharp clean edges. In addition to the common “paperback” book, the perfect binding method is used for manuals, catalogs and thicker brochures. One of the primary advantages of the perfect binding method is its professional finished appearance.

http://www.handson-inc.com/finish.html

3) Spiral Coil Binding.  This popular binding method uses a plastic or metal coil that is inserted and twisted through small holes or slots that run along the spinal edge of the book’s cover and pages. An advantage to this type of binding method is that the book can be opened a full 360 degrees which permits it to lie completely flat on a desk or table. This makes spiral binding a good choice for reports, sales presentations, proposals, directories, cookbooks and maintenance guides. If necessary, pages can be manually added to or removed from a spiral bound book, though not as easily as with a 3-Ring binder.

http://unicorn.net.au/index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=169

4) 3-Ring Binder.  This common binding method is another way to join separate pages into book form. Ringed binders containing loose leaf pages and tabs are frequently used for sales presentations, seminars and business meetings because the tabs allow the user to quickly index to a specific page Three-ring binders are also commonly used for price lists and operation manuals because pages can very easily be added or removed as changes occur. The cover and/or spine of the binder can be printed upon directly, or the binder can be made with a clear plastic overlay which allows printed inserts to be slipped in for the cover and/or spine.

http://www.pinazangaro.com/product/Sale/bryant-3-ring-binders.html?sku=36506

5) Hard Cover. There are various ways to bind a hardcover book. Sometimes the pages are gathered and sewn together with strong thread before the cover is attached. Other times the pages are simply glued together near the spinal edge before the cover is applied. The cover of a modern hardcover book is generally made from pieces of thick, rigid paper board. This dense board is commonly covered with a glossy coated paper for improved appearance and durability. In some cases, the paper board is covered with leather or a similar material. Because the front and back covers are inflexible, they must be created with a flexible hinge area near the spine to allow the book to open and close easily. Hard Cover binding is the most expensive binding method and is used for books that see frequent use such as textbooks and cookbooks, or when longevity is important such as a bible, yearbook or other keepsake. Hard cover books are also referred to as hardback or hardbound books.

http://zekoqyh.idwap.info/?c=bab-blanket-aiti&p=ard-cover-comb-binder

I remember that I had bound a book in first year of my study for one of the assignments in Skills for Academic Learning subject. And here's a link to the blog post of that book I bound years ago: http://kalilasnowjan.blogspot.com/2012/04/creative-book.html I had bound that book by Spiral Coil Binding.

I have considered binding this book that I'm working on with the same spiral coil binding method that I used couple years ago, but I gave up this thought as this method can lose the content of the artwork which I don't expect it to happen. I have also considered a lot of other book binding methods such as stitch binding and staple binding like the method of saddle stitching, but for such a book contented full of graphs and photographs are not such a good idea to go with as it may "hurt" the content of the graphs" and as well as such binding methods might turn out to be very unstable of the book itself.

Miss Nadira is the tutor on this book project as I have consulted a lot about book binding with her, and she helped me and guided me with this book project, she suggested me to bind my book with Perfect Binding method to bind my book, because perfect book binding won't lose the content of the book and the pages are glued the together. The down side of this method is that it wastes quit a lot of blank pages to be glued together than using them to print the content, but that way gives a better outcome of the book.

The tools that I have used to bind the books are:

cowgum glue

Cowgum glue was used as a big part while making and binding the book, cowgum is a very flexible glue that allows you to unstick and reap off the ones are bound together easily without destroying the pages, I have used this glue to bind individual pages to bind all the pages together into a book.

spray mount

Spray mount is also very useful while making a hard cover for the book, but I find cow gum glue more useful than spray mount and I'd prefer working with cow gum more than spray mount, because of tis flexibility. But depending on gluing different materials in different situations, spray mount might be more useful than cow gum glue, for example: gluing something really thin onto a board like form boards or hard paper boards.

metal ruler

Metal ruler is a great tool to help cutting with a cutter or knife, it helps cutting straight with out curving cuts. But be cautious while cutting with a metal ruler, cause you might just end up cutting your thumb accidentally, so focus while you cut and don't distract yourself to other matters. 

bank cards

Bank cards are used for applying cow gum glue to help the glue flatly fit into the page that you are going to stick, you can possibly use your hands and figures to apply cow gum glue, but it won't be as efficient as bank cards, and it will get your hand and figures really dirty and messy.

sharp cutter

And of course a sharp cutter, I have used this tool to cut off the edges of the book, so that the entire bound book will not have uneven edges, and it can be used in many other making process, like hard cover cutting and etc.

hard paper boards

Hard paper boards were used to make a hard cover for the book. But unfortunately it turns out, my book wasn't thick enough to add a hard cover on, and the spine wasn't wide enough, instead I made a semi-hard cover for the book, as I have experimented and tired to make the hard cover with the hard paper boards, it didn't turn out to be good looking. But it was definitely worth a try!

Here I will share some photographs of each pages and covers of the entire book and the final look of the book:

These 3 images above are the hard cover I made but failed a bit in the end because of the thickness of the book that I bound.

Book Cover

The conclusion of this entire book project: I had a lot of fun making this entire book even though it was a complicated work to do and it was time consuming but I have learned and practiced myself a lot while doing it, it is the first time that I work on such a book project, and I'm pretty sure I will be working on creating books this way again in the future. 

Reference:
Formax Printing: http://formaxprinting.com/blog/tag/types-of-bookbinding/