Book of 100 Dogs - Statement of intent

The title on focus of my work in response to this brief will be Dogs.

For my research I intend to investigate primary photography, interview responses and illustration. I also intend to collect secondary facts and statistics from book on the subject of dogs and internet sites. I have already collected photographs of 100 dogs together with information about each dog gained from an interview with the owner. The responses I have are both quantitative (dog age etc.) and qualitative (I asked each owner to describe their dogs personality) I would like to use some of these photographs in my final resolution somehow, but not all are of a quality I am satisfied with so I intend to see how I can use some as a starting point for illustration or typographic work. At this point I am thinking of creating a high quality book of dog based design work, a sort of coffee table book for people why appreciate both dogs and graphic design to dip into.

As mentioned, I would like to use some illustration work and typographic work in this book. Illustration is a skill I am quite weak in so I would like to develop my skills. I would aim to use my primary photography as a basis for the illustration, using illustrator and photoshop to experiment and explore ideas. As I get into this project I think the design outcome will become more focused and clearer, but I don't want to dismiss many ideas at this point, other than I don't want to make a typical boring 'book of dog breeds, facts and figures' or a children's book full of cuddly pets, that just isn't my thing. I think trying typographic work based on dogs will either turn out awful or brilliant. I will be interested to see which! I am also interested to see how I can desplay statistics in a visualy ingaging way.

To evaluate this work I would like to make use of crits in college and also people out of college to help me gauge the success of my work, I also know that friends who helped me by finding dogs for me to photograph over xmas will be interested in the progress of this project so I can make use of them as well. I plan to use a sketchbook for rough ideas as well as ongoing development and evaluation.