Hardcover Bound Book – ‘Ars Longa Vita Brevis’

As a class, we produced a hardcover book titled Ars Longa Vita Brevis, meaning ‘Art is long, life is short’. This theme was illustrated in varied ways in both the cover and the inside page.

This involved creating a double-page spread and dust jacket each, whilst cooperating with each other to prepare the pages for printing.

Above is an image of the dustcover. I walked up to One Tree Hill to take some photos and displayed them on the cover. The ‘Art is long, life is short’ theme is truly shown in both the sunset image and an image of the bush taken in Spring. These photos also appear on my One Tree Hill photo gallery page (click here to view). In addition, an earthly colour scheme was applied to the cover.

Fitting the dustcover was a challenge. Adjustments needed to be made to the size of the flaps, along with several reprints to be able to fit the dustjacket successfully.

The theme is displayed differently in the double-page spread. The notion of art is very graphically depicted in the posterisation of the Pieta. In terms of life being short, it appears that life is at an end, with Jesus resting in Mary’s arms. The shortness of life certainly applies to the amount of time one spends on earth. However, when one thinks of the eternal life that Jesus offers, life is anything but short.

The biggest learning experience from this collaborative project, however, was in the opportunity to set up the pages ready for offset printing, along of the reward of visiting the printing press and actually seeing our work in the process of being printed. We were required to work as a group to swap files with fellow students and set up an imposition (as shown above), so pages can be printed and collated in chronological order. This project helped us to develop skills that can be used within the technical aspects of any design job.