Anxious Homes

Subtitled: Cursory-Cleaning for the imminent arrival of visitors, or 

How to Give the impression of a Clean House in under 20 minutes.

The book 190mm x 125mm, pink single-section sewn binding.
The cover is satin card backed with pink patterned paper.
It contains 18 pages on 130gm cartridge paper.
Produced in editions of 10 - First Edition produced in 2001 (as part of my practice-based PhD)

Anxious Homes, is the antidote to all the 'Life Instructions' that surround us. Far from being outraged at the patronising tone of 'How to do it' books, I have always found them funny. This book provides a step-by-step guide of how to appear like you're doing everything properly. It contains explanations in detail of how-to-get-away-with-it. It is a manual for people with better things to worry about than housework.

There are sections on; anxiety and the home; nearly cleaning floors; the bathroom and kitchen; washing clothes; dealing with emergency visitors; and a chart of serenity and anxiety. Anxious Homes seeks to take away the homemaker's feeling of inadequacy by promoting shortcuts as if they are perfectly normal.

Anxious Homes was inspired by my childhood experience. As a 10 year old, I remember being amazed at how my mother used to frantically tidy the house before visitors arrived. When I asked her what was wrong with letting our relatives see us how we usually lived, she was horrified at the idea. When I started living in my own home I noticed I had inherited 'pretending to be tidy' from my mother. When my parents (or especially parents-in-law) visit I rush round picking piles of papers off the floor and making sure the bathroom taps are shiny. Cleaning-up thoroughly is a long job and despite my collection of Good Housekeeping Manuals there's just not enough time to be the ideal woman, when you have good books to read, drawings to make and tea to drink.

So I created Anxious Homes for the busy woman.

Which Filter Works?

The book was produced in an edition of 7 printed on 130gm cartridge paper, the cover is yellow card and the cigarette cards are printed on glossy card. 3D Glasses accompany the book.
The book measures 190mm x 120mm.
This book was one of the elements within my practice-based PhD about anxiety in advertising.

The book Which Filter Works? began with the series of six cigarette cards, each one based on an existing factual diagram found within U.S. cigarette advertisements of the period. I felt the re-drawn diagrams needed to be placed within the context of a collectors book, the book was planned to parody the science and technology, of Filter-Tip cigarettes. My invented brand Lemorette was the focus, as if the book was a promotional item to introduce a new brand. The name Lemorette is mentioned as many times as possible. The tone of the book is instructional but rather patronising assuming the consumer is childlike in intellect. The consumer's children are encouraged to participate. 3D glasses are included in the front of the book. It was intended that viewing the book via the glasses should feel a little ridiculous.

For more information about the choice to use 3D imagery select The use of 3D section.
The book is in two sections, the first half is informational and offers advice and justifications, including headings such as;

A Doctor Speaks... 
This is a bogus endorsement from a medical specialist suggesting he has been paid to say whatever the manufacturers want him to.
What's 3D and why the funny-looking glasses?
Explanation of how to view 3D, suggesting that the novelty glasses can enhance understanding.

Psychological fact: PLEASURE HELPS YOUR DISPOSITION
Double page chart intended to show how smoking more can ease anxiety, the title 'PLEASURE HELPS YOUR DISPOSITION' was used by Camel in their 1954 advertisements.

So what's wrong with cigarettes? / Worries melt away...
This diagram needs to be viewed by blinking each eye in turn, hence the diseases associated with smoking that appear listed above the woman's head fade away and the brand name Lemorette takes their place.
What's a filter anyway? / How do other brands compare? 
Although the title suggests that this section will explain what a filter is, the text goes on to skirt around the issue by taking about umbrellas and roofs, again speaking, as if to a child. The diagram needs to be viewed by blinking each eye in turn to see the Lemorette brand stopping all harmful lines from penetrating the body, closing the other eye shows tangled lines in the lung area when a different brand is smoked.

What about these rigorous tests? 

This double page pread shows a bar graph that is all but useless since it has no axis numerals. Instead the danger is shown by simply making the bars longer or shorter, the categories read 'safe', 'inert', 'concern', 'risky', 'dangerous' and 'deadly' but again no qualification of the measurements are given. Opposite is a cross-section of the Lemorette filtered cigarette, parodying the conventions of the cross-section diagrams that appear so frequently in Filter-Tipped brands' advertisements. The Lemorette filter is so complex that only about a sixth of the cigarette is actually tobacco. The filter names however are all genuine.

The second section is an image of a large extended cigarette - this is where the six cigarette cards are stuck-in. This section also has additional statistics and comments about the brand, it ends with a performance chart and image of the factory where Lemorette is supposedly made. The book ends on a final endorsement from Dr.Wolf about Lemorette 'The World's first SAFE Cigarette'.

Notes about the use of 3D

I experimented with 3D imagery to give a 'gimmicky' feel to the book. The book was therefore created in red/green anaglyph 3D for a sense of cheap novelty. 3D glasses are included in the front of the book and the consumer is instructed when to put them on and take them off. Some diagrams require the viewer to close one eye and then switch to the other in order to get the hidden messages within the pages - Viewing the book should feel complex and yet embarrassing.
The section, What's 3D and why the funny-looking glasses? Seeks to explain how to view 3D, suggesting that the novelty glasses can enhance understanding, whereas the over complex information instead seeks to cloud the issue and bedazzle the consumer.

There are two types of anaglyph illustrations used in the book;

1. A composite image that appears to have several levels when viewed with the red/green glasses.
e.g. the image of the Lemorette factory on p.20, A Doctor Speaks... the image of Dr.Wolf's endorsement on p.2, and all six of the separate stuck-in cigarette cards.

2. Two separate images, one in green, the other in red viewed by opening and closing each eye in turn. e.g. the image of the woman on p.6 Worries melt away... , the diagram on p.7 What's a filter anyway? and the face in the rounded box on the cover of the book.

What's a filter anyway? / How do other brands compare?
This diagram needs to be viewed by blinking each eye in turn to see the Lemorette brand stopping all harmful lines from penetrating the body, closing the other eye shows tangled lines in the lung area when a different brand is smoked.

The illustrations (below) show how the illustration is seen in the green lense only (left) and the red lense only (right).

Creating Anaglyphs
I used Adobe Photoshop to separate my illustrations into about 6 layers and then created a red and green version of each layer. To make images appear closer to the viewer the red layer should be shunted to the right. In order to make the image recede the red layer should be nudged to the left.

Menthol Madness

This multiple measures 125mm x 235mm 

It contains a folding display box printed on green card in a clear packet.
An information card is visible through the back of the pack.
Menthol Madness is stapled shut with a folded glossy card label.
The box can hold up to 20 cigarettes and 10 sticks of gum.

The Menthol Madness packet was a response to the effects of menthol cigarettes or chewing gum on the body. If Mint or Menthol is used to freshen breath and nullify soreness, I wondered what an overdose of mint could do. The box container is presented as a promotional item for Elysian's Cigarettes (my own fictional brand). 

The purpose of the box, when constructed, is to hold 20 cigarettes and 10 sticks of gum. The instructions on the box explain how to smoke and chew gum at the same time to achieve 'over-mentholisation', which I called the Menthol Rush - That everybody's talking about.

Although Menthol Madness is an obvious exaggeration, in the U.K. in the early eighties the combination of fluoride in the water supply plus fluoride treatment at the dentists plus fluoride toothpaste resulted in a few children noticing the enamel on their teeth had become bumpy. A reaction to too much fluoride in their systems, likewise over-consumption of the Sunny Delight, an orange drink aimed at children, was suspected of causing the hue of the skin to become orangey. Roald Dahl's champion gum chewer, Violet suffers a similar fate in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory. The box is a functioning item although its intention is to use hyperbole to dissuade the activity it was designed for.

The multiple was packaged flat as a box net that could be easily assembled when bought.

Detail of the folded box front

Sketchbook Pages showing work in progress
	Images of test boxes

Working visuals for the packet and packet header