New assignment, New set of blogs (Research into What a Carve Up)

Welcome everybody to my new post. As I have purchased both books and I quickly scanned the  books and looked onto the summary of the plots to help me understand both plots  This one covers What the Carve Up whist the second one includes The Outsiders plot. I am aiming to read through the books to get visualise the content, the imagery and other visual detail.

Here is the simple summary that I wrote in bullet points for The Outsiders.

What the Carve Up

• Michael Owen is commission to write the history of the Winshaw family. (1980’s) receives money from Tabitha.
• Often works on and off the project due to no deadline
  
• Michael puts himself into Isolation in his house, watching old films, particularly a comedy called What a Carve up staring Kenneth Conner and Sid James
• Neighbour seeking support from him to perform the bike ride for a charitable cause.
• Book focuses on of the Winshaw of Yorkshire family
• Godfrey  is shot down during the second world war during a secret wartime mission(berlin 30 November 1942)z
• Tabitha is one sister who was sent to a mental home after accusing Lawrence for killing his own brother. 
• very unlikes and hypocritical journalist, Hilary, 
• A ruthless and determined business man Harry
• Banker, Thomas 
• Art dealer Roderick 
• A business and arms dealer Mark 
• Every chapter provides a story of each Winshaws family member’s horrible characteristics, such as their greed and self interest
• The writer’s becomes interested into the family after meeting a detective who is investigating whether Lawrence is a complicit with Godfrey’s Death
• Fiona develops a warm relationship with the writer. However it is discovered that  he is suffering with a disease 
• Her appointments with her consultant are constantly delayed and it is believed her medical records are misplaced
• Travels to hospital to receive treatment but the due to an administrative error, she dies in 1991 (New Year)
• An invitation for a will hearing appears to Michael from Mortifer Winshaw’s solicitors 
• He originally thought the purpose of the summoning was for him to write about the family’s history. As it turns out, there is more of a connection between him and the family than he realises.
• The attendance of the event included an artist Phoebe, sent by Roddy and  Mortifer’s personal nurse.
• Everybody discovers Mortifer's intention not give his inheritance to his family. Worse of all, all of dept will be given to the family to pay. 
• It is revealed that Michael is the sole surviving son of Godfrey
• As the story progresses, majority of the family member meet their deaths  that relate to their professional wrongdoings.
• This was the specific night when the allied forces conducted airplane strikes to Iraq 
• A plot twist occurs when it is discovered that he was the individual who attacked Lawence
• The ending of story shows Tabitha. plotting a plane with Hillary and Michael on board. Unfortunately, she on purposely crashed the plane, therefore killing everybody on the plane.

Research into existing design 

This is the design(above) that is currently used for the story's book cover.  The design consists of real images of objects and a woman for it's main imagery. The use of a iconic symbol of a character (signifier) from the movie suggest this book includes a scene with a woman posing near a bed. In a way, the overall theme looks a little bit cheesy for a politcal story.  I would expect an English flag that is symbolic and iconic signs of the Margret Thatcher era.

Purple and white makes the overall scene has characteristics of a 1960's movie and the serif designed typeface features a bold steam. The strong attribute is specific is used on the writers name's make it noticeable, therefore, it makes it obvious to the reader who is the author.  

This is my least favourite book cover of What A Carve Up has to offer. The overall book cover is poorly designed because it is very basic and does not use the negative space. This reduces the impact because that negative layout does not to store signifiers that makes references to the story. In addition the type design makes the content illegible. I feel that adding very thick strokes distorts the kerning in a negative way, thus making it unreadable. 

This very dull book cover for this story shows a man watching a television. This man is seating in a empty room that suggests that he does take an intrest in decorating his living room. On an interesting note, the iconic signifier, the flowers, makes a reference to the part of the story where Fiona gives him flowers. Although it is not obvious, the man is watching a program featuring Suddam Hussein.  The book states that he watching a program about the Kuwait invasion in the 1990's. This suggest that is the time period where the story is set. 

Unlike the other book cover design, the composition is busy and the overall language looks dynamic. The design features very modern and script type typefaces postioned everywhere that makes the cover resemble of a sketch book page featuring cut outs. However, this characteristic reduces the impact of the title because some of the words are covered with another image. A good example of this would ear covering about quarter of the letter U.  

To put this on a denotation and connotation level, this book shows a vibrant looking man being smothered by paint and typefaces used on Newspapers, like the Guardian. These arbitrary signs connotes elements of media in the story . Doing the research on the year when it was released, the colour scheme is appropriate because pink and the other vibrant colour do symbolise 1980's art. I will demonstrate that on a later post.  

This is the last image that generally looks like a dull book cover. Both sides of the cover consists arbitrary signifiers that just makes the overall cover design look formal. This cover book filed with only text, title and quotes just discourages people to read story. The book cover attempts to use the review as main selling point. This feature entices the reader to believe that they should read the story because it has been recommended by professional journalists.  

The cover uses many levels of hierarchy to get the most important information to be noticeable first. The largest thing on the page is the title. The white text enables the author's name to second most noticeable arbitrary sign of the cover. Quote marks and bold font are used to make the quotes from the review to  stand out. This attribute also applied to the back cover. 

A refernce to the image that make the post more interesting and a link to information

http://novelreading.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/what-a-carve-up-jonathan-coe/
Here is the information from the plot summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_Carve_Up!_(novel)
http://www.penguin.com.au/jpg-large/9780241964767.jpg

http://www.jonathancoewriter.com/images/books/entryPage/UK-Carve-1994.gif

http://thejkreview.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/tumblr_m2e1xewswx1qa9j5g.jpg