The Edinburgh international Book Festival itself does not offer many souvenirs, apart from bookmarks and passes or tickets. This may be because a signed book will always hold the highest value to an attendee of the EIBF, as it provides a personal connection between the author of the literature that an attendee may have owned previously or felt connected to.
Moving forward, I knew that I would not be able to create a souvenir that would replace the value and experience that comes with a signed book. Instead, I decided to create a tool that allowed attendees to document their experiences at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
The design concept I decided to develop was to create a festival journal that allows users to document their experience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in creative ways. Taking inspiration from Wreck this Journal and the general concept of journals, I decided to assign each page to a different event at the book festival, with each page containing the same elements. The elements that I thought were important to include were a section where the name of the event could be written, a section for signatures from authors and speakers, as well as section that varied with each page, where it gave small writing challenges to the user.
Another feature that I decided to include was a section for venue stamps; each tent at the book festival village would have 3D printed stamps that correspond to their names. When the user attends an event in that tent, they can stamp the page they documented that experience on using the specific venue stamp. I thought it was important to include the stamp because it provides a sense of physicality and proof that you actually attended the event; the only way to attend an authentic stamp is by actually going to the event.
Alternate pages that are included in the journal function as storage and display for bookmarks and postcards, other common souvenirs collected at the book festival. The arcs represent cut sections that allow the items to be slotted in; as bookmarks come in two standard sizes, there multiple slots to allow for this.