CDF Project 5 — Grid, Style, & Format
In this project, I was able to apply the skills I garnered this whole semester including typography and grid systems in order to create my own book about anything I want. Coming up with my general idea was almost a no brainer. I took a trip to the Canadian Rockies, including Banff, Yoho, and Jasper National Park last summer, and with all the photos that I took, I knew I wanted to create a photo book. The challenge was making sure my imagery had a consistent look and feel as my typography, voice of text, and general layout. Ultimately, I chose to do a photo journal, taking the reader along my journey. Below is a sneak peak of my final book made with InDesign and Illustrator! Read on about my process from ideation to the final product.
I. Brainstorming
With the initial idea of using my photos from the Canadian Rockies, the next step was thinking about what I wanted to do with the photos. I had the following ideas:
- photo journal of my favorite places
- nature guide (animals, glaciers, waterfalls, lakes)
- include photos (just landscape or include people too?), quotes, and/or captions
- do hand lettering for the text
- sort my photos by color
One thing I knew for sure was that I wanted the feeling of the book to be fun and adventurous. After consideration, I decided a photo journal split into the three national parks I went to fit the theme I was going for. With that more thorough idea in my mind, I started sketching out some layouts of my spreads.
II. Sketches of Layout
I wanted the main focus of my book to be my photos and my personal experience. To keep with the fun, personal vibe of the book, I thought a square orientation book would work best. Furthermore, I have pictures of different orientations, so I knew I did not want to have a standard modular grid layout. However, I did not want it to feel disorganized either, so I thought a non-standard modular grid would work for my photos, where I started off with a base 3x3 grid, but would allow my photos to span across multiple modules or even half a module. This makes the grid look organized, yet keeps it interesting. Having different sized photos also allows the reader to see certain images that I like most first and makes it look less cluttered.
With such beautiful landscape photos in the Canadian Rockies, I also knew I wanted to let the photos speak for itself. So on my two-page spread with a caption, I thought I could leave one side just for a photo. The same reasoning goes for the location’s title page. A landscape or panoramic photo would perfectly span the two pages and provide the reader with an overarching idea of the location’s scenery. After sketching the photo gallery, I thought it may look too cluttered with not enough white space, so for my next idea I added a margin around the photos, which I thought made it much more pleasing to the eye and organized.
The front cover is inspired by the Banff and Jasper sweatshirts I saw at gift shops while I was there. The intersecting arrows seemed like an iconic symbol, and I liked how it gave the cover more dynamic and flair. Curving the word “summer” brought playfulness to the more rigid lines of the arrows. The back cover with “adventure” was also inspired by a sweatshirt I saw before with the word perfectly broken into three rows. “Adventure” embodies my trip to the Canadian Rockies and I thought it worked in tying in the overall mood of the book. It furthermore matched the placement of text on the front cover, bringing in continuity to the book.
III. Digital Layout
I ended up discarding the photo gallery idea since I thought captions or blurbs were a necessity for a journal. Thus, I started transposing my ideas into InDesign. I started with the photo grids for each location. I knew I wanted each grid system to be a little bit different. Not only does that make it more entertaining, each location has photos that I chose of different orientations, so to show the original photo as much as I can, I played around with the layouts until I was satisfied with how they fit together. I also purposefully made the text for each location at a different place, with the first location, Banff, starting from the left to Jasper ending on the right. It conformed to complete the square. Furthermore, I played around with the gutter size to see how I could maximize the space and have the spread look clean.
For the intro spread after the cover, as the book is a diary of my trip, I thought it would be fitting to have an overview of my trip and the book itself. Still wanting to have the photos be the main focus, I knew I wanted to have a representative photo of each location. I did not put space between the three photos as I thought it would be interesting to see them right next to each other as a similarity/difference comparison. Having the intro text on the right allows the reader to see the pictures first and be engaged from the start.
IV. Adding Content
I started off with adding photos to my Banff spreads. When picking out the photos, I was sure to pick a mix of people, animals, and landscape as I wanted to showcase my photography as well as highlight my personal experience. I also took into consideration the colors, making sure they were bright yet work well with each other to form a cohesive spread. Of course, I chose photos from my favorite locations as well. I first placed the photo of the pink mountains in the left square since it was one of my favorite photos, but I realized that the square shape did not do the photo justice, so I swapped it with the current photo. Thinking through where to place the photos, I strategically placed them so that the photos’ full effect is shown and that animal and people photos were interspersed among landscape photos.
For the panoramic photo, I not only chose a photo that represented Banff National Park, but a photo that would complement white text overlaying it. As landscape photos are open and not super busy, the text overlaying in the middle still stood out while not overshadowing the photo. Thinking that it was a journal, I added the dates that I was there beneath the location in a smaller font size. For the title page font, I used Freestyle Script. Originally, I had wanted to hand write the text, but rethinking that decision, the process of scanning my text seemed impractical. That’s when I thought, “why not use a script font?” Freestyle Script is flowy, fun, and personal, yet legible.
Because the title page typeface looked so good, I thought it may be fun to use a similar font for the body text. I used Bradley Hand ITC, a more scrawly font, which I thought was perfect for it seemed like I wrote the text. However, during mid-crit I learned that it was not the most legible typeface.
V. Mid-Crit
It was mid-crit time. The main questions I wanted to ask for mid-crit were whether the grid layout looked nice, whether the fonts work well, whether the colors in the photos look interesting, whether the text placement is good, and how to make it more personal overall. I got the following main suggestions and comments:
Suggestions:
- increase the saturation of the photos
- maybe increase the gutter size for more white space
- break up the text so that it is not one huge blob (my professor suggested that I put all the text on the bottom of the page)
- try hand writing the text to make it more personal
- the current font for the body text is not super legible, so pick one that is more clean
- add some photos of up-close people and their expressions or food and souvenirs
Parts liked:
- the panoramic spread page is beautiful
- photos picked are really nice and the colors work well with each other
- overall grid layout is good
- variety of image proportions are nice
- the big square on the left complements the other photos in the grid
VI. Final Iterations
With the comments I received in mind, I completed my other spreads and did my final iterations.
I started with changing Banff. I first rearranged my grid so that all my text is on the bottom. I thought that was a great suggestion that not only made the page seem less cluttered, but allow for the photos to be more organized in one place. Because of the reorganization and the comment that the photos should be more saturated, I not only enhanced the colors on some of the photos with Photoshop, but took out the panoramic photo that was lacking in color. This new composition looks more clean while retaining the fun, personal feeling. As some people thought the gutters may be too small, I played around with a bigger gutter size, but after changing all the gutter sizes, I felt that it made the photos too small. Furthermore, with the changes in the text placement, I did not think it cluttered. Thus, I kept the gutter widths the same.
As I started writing more about my favorite places in my text, I realized that readers would not know where I am talking about because the photos are not captioned. I was at a dilemma. If I were to caption the locations of each photo, I would need to make my gutter a lot bigger in order to incorporate text. But then the photos would look awkward so far apart. I finally thought of the idea that I could overlay the location in white text like I did for the title page. Turns out, it works really well on the bottom right corner of each photo, allowing the reader to follow along what I am saying while not distracting from the photo itself. Initially, I made some of the text white and some of it black since some of the white text did not show up so well on the photo. However, I did not like the mix of black and white, so I made the photo work with the text by changing the zoom of the photo to a size where the text is visible.
Applying the design elements from Banff, I composed Yoho and Jasper’s spreads in a similar fashion.
I completely changed the grids for these locations to work with the photos that I wanted to use. It was definitely a challenge trying to place them without them seeming too orderly or too random. I furthermore purposefully made sure no two people or animal photos were next to each other for a good mix. Naturally, these photos’ colors complemented each other with the blue, green, brown, and white hues.
For the title page panoramic photos, I purposefully chose photos that had both mountains and water for each location to give continuation between the locations. It furthermore serves as a way to compare between the locations. For the square photo on the lefthand side of the spread, I chose photos that I thought represented the location that I went to. Banff was all about its blue lakes, Yoho had many beautiful waterfalls, and Jasper was home to a lot of cool wildlife.
For the typeface of the body text, given the comments that the font was too messy, I wanted to use a clean, simple, yet still personal font. I thought Avenir worked perfectly, as it has an organic and clean character, and the sans serif, round, and geometric quality of the typeface still suits the overall theme. I also made sure the texts all reached the margin and that there were not any awkward dangling words on a line. This gives order and completeness to the design.
Despite positive comments on my title page font, I thought it could be even more fun, so I scoured the internet and found a font called Beautyface. Beautyface is even more flowy than Freestyle Script and the loops in the script and contrast between the thick and thin strokes adds more movement to the composition as a whole. All in all, it gives life to the seemingly static photos. For Jasper, I made sure not to overlay the text onto the kayak, so I placed the kayak right below the text to emphasize it and bring balance to the spread.
For the overview spread, I was debating what photos I should use for the three locations. A friend suggested that I use the same photos that I did for the panoramic title pages. I thought that was a great idea. It not only serves as a sneak peak to the rest of the book, but ties in the whole trip together with the similarities between the photos. I thought about aligning the mountains and waters across the three photos, however, it was not feasible in terms of proportion. In the end, I thought leaving them disjointed gave each location its own character.
For the overview text, I also used Avenir. Having it centered and just a bit shorter than the height of the photos tied in the body of text to the photos instead of making it seemingly a separate entity if it spanned the whole height. This moreover allows the reader’s eyes to take in the whole body of text more easily.
Moving on to my front cover, since I knew I would need to place text on it, I wanted to choose a clean photo with not too many elements going on. At the same time, I wanted the photo to give off an adventurous feeling. Finally, I decided on the photo of Peyto Lake that I used in my Banff spread. Despite the overall light blue color, it has a pop of red with the kayak which also gives movement and action to the book. I adjusted the photo’s positioning so that a lot of the sky is shown in order to provide a relatively blank canvas for the overlaying title design. I create the curved text as well as the arrow graphics in Illustrator. I had a tough time deciding the typeface, or mix of typefaces, I wanted to use for the cover. Below are my different iterations until I settled on the one shown above.
Initially, I just used Avenir Heavy for all of my text. The bold text made it stand out agains the background, but the text seemed too rigid against the background and did not fit the feeling I was going for. That’s when I thought that I could use Beautyface. All caps worked for “summer” but not for “the Canadian Rockies” as it seemed disjointed in all caps, so I changed it to normal capitalization. I changed the font of the numbers as well, but the curviness of the numbers did not seem to pair so well with the straight edges of the arrows. Lastly, I tried mixing the typefaces and keeping the numbers as Avenir Heavy. Avenir Heavy seemed too bold against the Beautyface text, so I finally changed it to Avenir Medium. I made the font size of “the Canadian Rockies National Parks” bigger in order to streamline the width from top to bottom. The different elements melded together at last.
The last component to make my book complete was my back cover. I initially thought I would again use a simple photo in order to overlay the “adventure” text over it. However, scrolling through my photos I stumbled upon a sunset photo of me looking out into the mountains. I thought that was the perfect photo, representing me saying goodbye to the Canadian Rockies and looking towards my next adventure. Again, it adds the personal touch. The sunset colors furthermore contrast with the daybreak colors of the cover. Lastly, having my name on the lower right corner mirrors the location captions of the inner pages.
Below is what the physical copy of the final book looks like.
VII. Final Crit
Although we did not give each other comments during final crit, I was able to see the beautiful work that others did, ranging from a children’s book to a food diary. I sincerely thought some of them could be published.
VIII. Reflection
This was my first time using InDesign, and I definitely see how powerful it can be as a design tool for grids, spreads, and prototypes. The culminating project was challenging and I learned a lot, from when a font choice may be overboard to thinking about individual components and how that fits in with the design as a whole. It was also fun as I not only got to scroll through all of my summer trip photos and reminisce the experience, but also got to put my thoughts down and create a whole book out of them. I never would have thought that I would or even could create my own book from scratch, but when thrown into the unknown, I come out the other side surprising myself with what I am capable of learning in such a short time and what I end up driving myself to achieve.
