Case Study help-book... at last!

(A bit of a funny one this... I can't sell the damn thing but it might make my life a little easier and some students may get to produce good work from it but here goes...)

So, the day finally arrived when i managed to complete the book.  It started life as a desperate attempt to organise a part of my delivery that had always gone wanting… the case study.  This project began last summer (2010) when somebody asked for some help with their investigation and I went about my usual scrabbling around for 'question sheets'.  I was unhappy with kids producing dull word docs when they had so many other creative skills and needed to learn more, quick.  I began to produce one for that day (as is normal for me) in a rough DIY 'zine'  style, but quickly realised the potential of what i could cram in (but sadly not the work that it would entail).  The results of this hilarious first attempt are the last of the images below...

So the answer seemed to be create a short 'book' that explained what you could do when studying others' work, what fun could you have, what skills could be learnt, and how could you get away from writing reams…  This need also tied in (as it so often does) with my need to get away from doing everything using Illustrator and Photoshop and try to learn how to draw again… with a brush… in a comic/zine style.  I must admit looking back throughout the earliest pages I had constructed, that you can se a tentative hand, and that some of the experiments in the middle section (questions) either go horribly wrong or are worthy of further exploration.   

There is no narrative to the book, what I wanted to do for the students was provide a useful, entertaining and stimulating example of what could be achieved with a moderate amount of time and plenty of passion.  The reason there is no narrative is that I just drew whenever I could and didn't filter the subject matter in any way, I just let it happen.   I haven't attempted to try the book on the students as yet and they have done plenty of case studies in the mean time (with me barking what is in the book…) I will post some results when the time comes…

Anyhoo, this post shows in hideous detail most of the steps in the construction of the book, it's pretty dull but helps as a teaching aid.  The most tricky bit so far has been sortin gout collation of the pages... y'see, as usual i didn't start with a plan...

PS.  the book is 64 pages long, is split up into sections such as; intro, contacting artists/designers, context & content, excuses, glossaries, form, Andy Warhol's advice, process, personal response and self-assessment... Jesus, that sounds like a boring book.

PPS. my favourite part features a set of free excuses for Sixth Form students to use when they miss the deadline.... featuring such classics as 'I'm allergic to pencils'  and 'oh God yeah, I fell over'   (Thanx to @scottambrose10 for the brilliant 'Chinese burn' excuse and Pete for walking over.)