Project 5 — Grid, Style & Format
Kruti Koppolu
Project Background
The aim of project five was to design and put together a bound book of our own choice of content. It incorporated one’s knowledge of typography and grid systems to make appropriate designs based on the content. The audience for this project was the class as well as potential future employer.
My Idea
For this project, my idea was to create a photo book consisting of photos and experiences of current fourth year students at Carnegie Mellon. This was in an effort to bring together two of my passions — photography and people. First, I pushed out a questionnaire on Facebook regarding one’s CMU experience and made it available to any senior who would be interested in participating in my project. The second step was to photograph 10 seniors out of everyone who filled out the questionnaire using my film camera and what I learned from Black & White Photography 1. Lastly, I assembled the images and stories together to create the content for the book.
Design Process
Stage 1 — Brainstorming & Sketching
Coming up with the idea for the content of the book wasn’t difficult because I actually started thinking about it a while before the project was assigned. However, the tricky part was finding a layout that seamlessly combined text and the photographs. Initially, I intended to print the black and white photographs and place them within the book using photo corners so that it almost embodied a photo-album-like quality. With that in mind, my initial sketches can be found below.
Stage 2 — Digital Iterations
After sketching, I used InDesign to produce digital iterations of my idea. In the first round of iterations, which can be found below, I played around with the placement of the photo and text.
After the feedback I received on these iterations, I decided to forego using physical prints and instead use digital scans of the images taken with my film camera. As such, I created a whole new set of iterations that involved experimenting with bleeds, typefaces, and interaction between text and images. My second round of digital iterations can be found below.
My third round of digital iterations included the actual scans of the students I photographed. I also played around with different background colors as well as margins for the text.
A huge aspect of my work in InDesign involved experimenting with both Sans Seriff and Seriff typefaces, letter tracking, background color and different styles to create a hierarchy within each page to emphasize an overall voice for the book.
Stage 3 — Cover
After I finalized a basic layout and grid for the content pages, I began to work on the cover. I knew I wanted my cover to reflect the black & white aesthetic and voice that is present throughout the content, while also giving an indication to what the book holds inside. I wanted it to reflect the photographic nature of the content. I started off by sketching various ideas that I hand in mind, which can be found below.
While going through the process of brainstorming a cover, I also played around with the name of the book. While I initially titled it “A Senior Story”, I changed the title to “Glimpses” because I felt it more accurately represented the nature of the content.
My final version of the cover can be found below.
The idea behind the cover is that it showcases what the book contains without revealing too much information. Having the images run across the bottom of the cover helped connect both the front and the back while also not taking too much attention away from the title and author, as well as depicting the black and white film quality of the images.
Final Product
My final product consisted of a front and back cover, an acknowledgements page, a foreword (message to the reader), ten spreads of images and content, and lastly a closing passage.
Reflections
I absolutely loved this project. I was able to use everything I learned over the course of the semester to put together a piece that I truly believed in. This project really pushed me as not only a budding designer but as a photographer as well. It took a lot of time and effort but to me, everything was worth it and I’m quite proud of the work that I came up with in the end.
