Project 4: Shape and Color
Thursday: October 11, 2018
For this project, I will be designing three covers for books that are a part of a series and create a strong connection through the series. I need to make the three covers distinctive but have common design elements that unite the collection and communicate the books relate to one another.
Through this assignment, I will be dealing with with issues of hierarchy (typographic, color, and spatial), as well as expression. I need to see how much emotion and abstraction I can bring while being an effective communicator at the same time. I will need to find the balance between form and function. Gestalt principles and typographic excellence will both
come into play. Designing the white space will be just as important as everything else.
To start I need to choose a series of books. The ones I am interested in are:
- Food type — avocado, egg, toast ; chicken, waffles, mimosas; avocado, egg, bacon
- Cities — New York, San Francisco, Chicago
- Roald Dahl — Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The Big Friendly Giant
- Seasons — Summer, Fall, Spring
I want to use the idea where there is continuation when the books are lined up next to each other so I think the cities idea would be cool because I would get to implement this by a map of the US or by having a road go through the three book
I really like the food idea because I think we could aesthetically implement this idea using the information we learned about colors today in class.
If I implemented the city idea I would use the skylines and connect them or a map of us divided into three throughout the books.
If I implemented the chicken and waffles and mimosas idea I would like to draw everything out with a watercolor theme like so.
If I implemented the avocado, eggs, and bacon idea I would draw everything out with basic shapes and play with bright colors and text more. I would keep the images minimalistic.
City Idea:
The front covers would be the skyline outlined and the title and author.
The spine would be the initials of the city and have a map of US that is connected through all three when placed next to each other with a pointer at the location of the city of that book. The back would have a brief description.
Food Idea:
There would be very minimalistic drawings of an open half avacado, a sunny side up egg, and a piece of bacon. The colors would be bright and the text would be playful and modern.
The spine would have small drawings of each and the text would be clean and thin font.
Based off of my ideas, I think the city idea is more creative so I will be going with this.
Monday: October 15, 2018
Book 1: San Francisco
Front Cover — Title: See San Francisco; Author: Victoria Smith; Image: Skyline of San Francisco
Spine — Text: San Francisco; Image: US Map (left) with pin on SFO
Back Cover — From internationally popular design blogger SF Girl By Bay comes the ultimate love letter to San Francisco. This gorgeously photographed lifestyle guide gives readers an insider’s tour of the City by the Bay through Victoria Smith’s unique lens. Organized by neighborhood, each chapter features enchanting photos of hidden corners, local color, landmarks, and hot spots, revealing why so many people, Victoria included, fall head over heels for this amazing city. Brimming with original, dreamy photography and packaged as a gorgeous jacketed hardcover, this lovely book makes a perfect gift for photography fans, San Francisco dwellers, visitors to the city, or those who have left their hearts in San Francisco.
Book 2: Chicago
Front Cover — Title: See Chicago; Author: Mark Green; Image: Skyline of Chicago
Spine — Text: Chicago; Image: US Map (center) with pin on CHI
Back Cover — ‘Ten Must-See Sights: Chicago’ does exactly what it says on the tin, giving you the background and history on the city’s top ten ‘must-see’ attractions, plus essential information on opening times and location. We don’t fill endless pages with hard-to-read maps and difficult-to-download photos; there are ten chapters of text, one on each attraction, all written by our team of experienced travel writers.
Book 3: New York City
Front Cover — Title: See New York City; Author: Jonathan Melmoth and Victor Beuren; Image: Skyline of New York City
Spine — Text: New York City; Image: US Map (left) with pin on NYC
Back Cover — Take a tour of New York City, ‘The City that Never Sleeps’. Discover New York’s vibrant history, see skyscrapers being built, and visit Grand Central Station in rush hour. Look around leafy Central Park, bustling Times Square and see inside several of the city’s famous galleries, including the Guggenheim and the Met. With over 80 flaps to lift.
Spine Image Ideas:
Tuesday: October 16, 2018
For today’s class, we went to the Fine and Rare Book Room and looked at Swiss pictures. This activity was really interesting as we go to see a lot of posters through the ages and analyze different elements of the poster that we can use in our projects as well. We focused on series and colored posters. I learned more about hierarchy, how we can use diagonals instead of horizontals, and how to block out some parts of the poster to see which elements are vital and how they affect the overall poster. I also learned about the use of colors. For series posters, I analyzed how different artists connected the series in different ways through the use of different types of elements.
Thursday: October 18, 2018
In this class, there was a grid and sketching exercise. Unfortunately, I had to miss this class but when looking over the lectures I learned about manuscript grids, column grids, modular grids, and hierarchical grids and how they can be used to convey different types of information. While creating series it is important to keep grids consistent throughout the series to show uniformity even in different information. I also went over the sketching lecture and learned about storyboarding and how to covey ideas into sketches easily. I also learned how to incorporate pictures and words and being consistent throughout sketches.
Saturday: October 20, 2018
I started sketching out my initial ideas for my book covers. I have four concepts.
My first concept is to have the skyline of the three cities. if you place all the books next to each other I want to align the skylines so it looks like a progression from the west to the east cost. Additionally, I want to create a picture of America when the spines are placed next to each other. Each spine will have a third of America with a pointer/pin on the corresponding city of the book.
The second concept is to have one element of the city highlighted on each cover. On the spine I want to have the acronym for the cities at the bottom.
The third concept is to have the acronym on the front of the book. However, each letter is going to be made up of things that are famous in that city. This is a more abstract idea and requires more of the sketching tools I have learned. For example, the ‘C’ in Chicago can be made up of the famous deep dish Chicago pizza. The ‘H’ can be made up of the Millennium Monument in Chicago. Lastly, the ‘I’ could be made up of the famous Willis Tower in downtown Chicago. This will allow the viewer to interpret the drawings and figure out the city. My ideas for the letters of SFO, and NYC are written in the sketch above.
The last concept is more interactive. I wanted to incorporate styles of the city in the cover so when a person is holding up the book to their face it shows something from the city. For example, for SFO there could be a boba straw the lower half of a face is sipping so it looks like the reader is sipping boba. I would incorporate styles, foods, and activities from NYC and CHI to incorporate this idea in all books. This was inspired by the Lays smiling packaging on their chip bags.
Tuesday: October 23, 2018
During class today, we learned how to use the pen tool. I learned how to trace and create curves and did some sketching exercises. I then decided to go with the skyline idea and started tracing the skyline for my book covers.
These are the skyline images I traced:
This is one of my initial drawings using the pen tool:
Wednesday: October 24, 2018
I wanted to get my three books before continuing so I went to hunt and eventually found these books. They are from the same series so they have the same height and similar spine width which is important for me to execute my idea.
As I got more comfortable using the tool I finalized my sketch of the skylines and fit it to the book margins.
I then wanted to make it like a silhouette and realized I had to fill it in using squares and the pen tool as if I chose to color the skyline the color went outside the drawing. I then filled out all of the skylines using the square and pen tool.
At this point, I realized I did not measure out space to incorporate the spine so I made copies of the skyline on more art boards to do this. I then added grids to measure out the front and back covers, the spine, and the two flaps. I also added horizontal gridlines to make sure it fits the height of the book. I added the grid lines on a different layer so I can hide them and see the cover without them.
I also added a third layer to align the skyline so they connect on the front cover when the books are placed next to one another. This layer also aligns the titles of the books. It also alights the three sections of America so they connect when the spines are placed next to one another.
This is how my book covers look currently. I am working on incorporating color, choosing the typeface for the title, figuring out where to place the author and description, and how to implement the title in the spine. I also am deciding if I should have a border around the USA that connects.
Thursday: October 25, 2018
Ideas for color: city colors (color block different for each book), gradient of sunrise to sunset from west to east coast, same colored skyline and sky for all three books; faded map of city in the background.
Typeface: something that shows the style of the city, something modern and simplistic and trendy
Spine: letters are sideways, letters read top to bottom.
I used the gradient tool but feel like these colors are too intense and messy for the theme I am going for.
For fonts I like American Typewriter and Myriad Pro.
Sunday: October 28, 2018
I finished coloring in the skyline using shapes and the pen tool. I was testing fonts for the title and this is the design I currently have. Each skylines fill is in a different layer so I can move things around and change the color for all at once easily.
The San Francisco Colors are Scarlet and Gold. → Scarlet/Red, Gold
The Chicago Colors Red, White, and Blue. → Red, Blue
The New York City Colors are Orange, Blue, White, and Gold. → Blue, Gold
I want to use the flag colors of these cities to color the skylines.
San Francisco:
Chicago:
New York City:
Monday: October 29, 2018
I added the named of the author and also text in the back of the book. I also added the pointer to the three cities in each part of the us map. I changed the text in ‘Chicago’ to be white as well to keep the books consistent. This is the pointer I added. It is followed by my updated series. I was unable to save it with grid lines originally so I added black lines to the edges and made the bleed higher to add my own grid lines for when it was printed.
Tuesday: October 30, 2018
I printed out my book covers and this is how they looked.
In class we had a critique and I received a lot of insightful comments. Here are a couple:
Wednesday: October 30, 2018
I read over the critiques and organized the thoughts into the main ideas and themes my classmates recommended changes on. Some of the classmates really liked the aspects other classmates wanted me to change so I added the reasoning for both sides below as well so I can make a decision:
Controversial Ideas:
- COLOR — Chicago color contrast is not consistent with other two; red contrasts too much with the blue; white text hard to read on light blue; dont all have to be red vs. Chicago contrast looks good and make SF contrast more, keep current color choice ,flag colors is good idea
- SKY— add clouds or gradient or gradient through the books vs. keep simple and do not add gradient/contrast looks good
- FONT — sans serif for modern or current for typewriter feel vs. typewriter is nice and fits well esp. with NYC and is modern
- HIERARCHY — author names in skyline of each book vs. hierarchy is currently good for author and title and if you put it in the skyline it would ruin the shade
General Recommendations:
- Alignment: of US
- spine — keep Chicago same size
- details on the building; more lively; more distinguishable landscape of each city
- negative space in SF and Chicago — separate long words
- SF title too close to the top
- less text on back so not blocky
Thursday: November 1, 2018
In class today, I worked on the general recommendations. I starting with fixing the spine text of Chicago so I made the text on all the spines size 24 and set the leading to 28. I fixed the alignment of the USA on the spine using grid lines. I decreased the text on the back of the page and changed the sizing to make it cleaner and more organized. I moved the titles so they are all aligned the the authors are hierarchically organized and aligned with the titles. Now, SF is not too close to the top. I also fixed the extreme negative space by increasing the leading and tracking of the title and author names. The leading is 60 and the tracking is 12. I also set the kerning to Optical and the size to 50.
Tuesday: November 6, 2018
For this class I am going to try to add more details to make the covers more lively. My idea is to add thin white lines to a specific building or randomly add details to give it a busy city playful vibe without being messy.
I am also working on the ideas that were controversial among the peer reviews. For the color choice some said they like the contrast and some said Chicago has too much contrast. I decided I am going to keep the contrast because the color of the flags brings more elements of the cities into the book cover. They also give a nice simple modern feel to the series. However, as the white text is hard to read in ‘Chicago’, I will be making a blue a little darker to make it easier on the eyes. I made the Cyan percentage increase to 40% so it is darker and the white text shows more. Additionally for the sky, I decided not to add a gradient because if I did the contrast effect and simplicity found by the use of flag colors would disappear and it would not look like a cohesive theme.
Font type is a decision I am struggling with. Even though American Typewriter seems like it suggests an old-fashioned image it has an industrial vibe that I think fits these covers well. It is also famous for its usage in the “I Love New York” logo so I will proceed to use this for the title on the front and spine. However, I want to use a san serif font of a different type for the author name and the text in the back of the book. I want this to be smaller and less intensive than American Typewriter so it creates hierarchy. From left to right the current fonts I am looking into are Proxima Nova Alt (Light), Shree Devanagari 714 (Regular), and Avenir (Book).
I will be going with Proxima Nova Alt (Light) because it still has curves to match with American Typewriter and is not very rigid like Shree Devanagari 714. It is lighter than Avenir (Book) which is good because I do not want it to attract much attention as I want the American Typewriter font text to be the main focus. I changed the text in the back and the author to this typeface and changed the tracking in the back text to make it more aligned. In terms of hierarchy with the author name, I agree that keeping it under the title is good because if I put it at the bottom of the skyline I feel like it would affect the contrast and look lost or cluttered. When it is under the title, it still can be read and is small enough in hierarchy so the title is still the main focus.
Wednesday: November 7, 2018
I made the title on the spine lower. I have now completed all planned changes except for one which was to add designs to the skyline to make it more lively. As I mentioned before, my idea is to add thin white lines to a specific building or randomly add details to give it a busy city playful vibe without being messy.
For SFO, I am going to add details to the Transamerica Pyramid. For CHI, I am going to add details to the Sears Tower. For NYC, I am going to add details to the Empire State Building.
This is how my final book covers look:
I printed them out in black and white to test out if the alignment is correct for the spines and the skylines.
Thursday: November 8, 2018
I sent my book covers to be printed and then trimmed them with appropriate bleed and trim lines. This is how the final book covers look.
After trimming them and putting them on the actual books this is the final result:
Interesting Elements:
- three cities go from west to east coast of america
- the colors are the flag colors of each city
- as you go from the west to east coast it represents sunrise, day time, and night time
- when all the books are aligned from west to the east coast the skylines on the front covers connect to create a large skyline
- when the spines are aligned from the west to the east coast the US map is created with a pointer on the city for each individual city
- the font is the “I Love NY” font
- a famous building is detailed in each city along with details in the sky based on time of day
These are the final critiques:
Sunday: November 11, 2018
Final Reflections:
I think I learned a lot of design and Illustrator concepts in the process of creating these book covers. On Illustrator, I learned how to use lots of new tools and played with shape, pen, color, and other items I haven’t used in the past. I also heavily used layers, the lock tool, and grids for these book covers and found how important they are. I think implementing the series into book covers instead of just a poster series was nice because it allowed me to learn other skills about alignment and measurement so it executes properly. I also used continuity in many different aspects in my book covers. I think the interim critique was really nice because we got to see everyones book covers and I received insightful feedback which I then implemented in my final book cover. Overall, this project was a great learning experience and fun to do! :)
