In this final project I designed a book with 8 spreads (16 pages), focusing on grid, color, and font choices to put together a well thought-out book design.
Ideation
I had a lot of trouble coming up with the idea for the book. I wanted to choose something that I loved, which was travel. I went to the American Southwest on vacation when I was rather young and I remember being fascinated that 1. there was such an expanse of red rock for hundreds of miles, 2. there were so many shapes that nature had carved into the rock through billions of years and 3. all of this was underwater at some point. So I wanted to make a book that highlighted the best types of rock that I saw on the trip to share with people who may be interested in visiting the region, so that they have a little guidebook that isn’t very conventional as it has some out-of-the-way places and recommendations.
I decided not to include Grand Canyon because it is rather cliché and most people have heard of it to some extent. I wanted to show that there are so many other places to visit in the Southwest beyond the stereotype.
Initial Format
I initially wanted to make a guidebook with very big pictures to display the geological features of the region. My initial sketches show very large pictures and very little text, something I generally stuck with throughout the process. I thought that the pictures of the rocks could explain what the rocks looked like better than a long paragraph of me describing what they looked like, especially if someone does not have a lot of time to read and figure out what type of rocks I’m talking about on each page.
New Formatting Idea
Since I originally wanted to create travel itineraries of which rocks to see on each day for approximately 7 days, Professor suggested that I format my book as an envelope with an itinerary on one sheet of paper for each day. Then, the reader could pick a day out of the envelope and follow that travel plan. I later had to abandon this great idea because I didn’t want to make itineraries anymore. I wanted to offer more flexibility to the reader of where to visit on which days, so I decided instead to focus on the features of each location instead of lumping them together. Then, the reader can choose their own travel plans instead.
Digital Iterations
Photo Choices
I tried to find pictures of different shapes instead of a bunch of long landscape photos. This was rather difficult because it was my natural tendency to pick a bunch of long panoramic shots. The panoramas really try to capture what it feels like to actually be at the location so I tended to include too many zoomed out landscape shots.
Through the photos I also tried to emphasize the different shapes of rocks commonly found at each location. Yes there is overlap in the types of rocks, because they are all in the same region. But I tried to emphasize the differences so that the reader doesn’t think that if they go to each location they would necessarily see the same rocks at each place.
Color Scheme
I chose a color scheme for each location based roughly on the colors of the rainbow. because even though the rocks are all reddish orange-ish, at different times of the day and at different agnles you can see different hues and i thought taht was very interesting I also tried to create a gradient in the way that I ordered the pictures, from dark to light on the page. This helped me make sense of the order to arrange my photos.
Grid Size
The initial grid was like 4 columns 8 rows. I spent a lot of time cropping photos down to the grid, and by the crit I realized that I needed to adjust the grid on each page, as the picture dimensions I had due to trying to fit the grid did not make sense in displaying the best view of each location. I had to let go of the drafts I had and remember that my grid could be more modular and flexible, and I had to remember that I need to try new options to see what works best.
Whitespace
I had a lot of trouble playing with the amount of whitespace. At first I was trying to pack as many photos in as possible; I just thought each location was too beautiful and I didn’t really know how to narrow down the photo choices. As a result my book looked more like a poorly designed brochure than a travel pocketbook. I also didn’t really play with some overlap between the pictures until much later, because at first I was hesitant to block parts of the landscapes that often extended beyond the edges of the picture frame. A long time later I eventually played around with it and found some sort of balance.
Crit Feedback
A lot of the feedback i got focused on white space. I also got feedback on the photo choices, whether it made sense which pictures I chose to be big or small. So for the final book I decided to have one large landscape photo, and some smaller photos that highlighted other types of rock found at the location. But I tried not to make the photos too small so that it was still clear what the subject of the photo was.
More Finishing Touches
I decided to play with the grid as well, since that had been causing problems with photo size. I settled on 6 rows and 3 columns for most pages, with no inside margin as I translated each single page location to a 2-page spread. Turning one page into two allowed me to increase the amount of whitespace and also blow up the landscape photos instead of trying to cram everything in. I also increased the margin all around to make it more comfortable to read and see the content, more like a book.
I also had some pictures bleed off the edge of the paper just trying to play around with a modular grid. I made sure not to do this excessively so as not to overcrowd the paper again.
Also, some pictures fit exactly on half of the spread, an intentional change as I played with how the pictures fit across 2 pages. I was still playing with arranging the content on the page in a way that made the most sense.
On one page I had a map representing where I took the pictures on that page. I wasn’t able to fit something like this into each page, still playing around with the amount of whitespace. For this map, at first I tried to run a Gaussian blur on a screenshot of Google Maps in Photoshop, but this didn’t turn out very nice so I decided to use a Google API that converted Google Maps to silver.
I ended up selecting at most 4 pictures per page, so that the pictures I chose would really be the ones that highlighted each location. I had to lose the cute little chipmunk but I was ok with this since the chipmunk didn’t really show the shape of the rock.
Color
Through the pictures I selected, I tried to further emphasize the color schemes. During the crit the schemes weren’t clear enough so I decided the colors by location should be:
- Bryce: White/Red
- Zion: Yellow
- Arches: Orange
- Sedona: Green
- Lake Powell: Turquoise
- Monument Valley: Indigo
- Antelope Canyon: Purple
Font
I changed the font because I wanted it to kinda look like other travel books such as National Geographic, or like an encyclopedia, but with a modern kick. I settled on a font that was serifed (PT Serif) and thus looked a little bit more like authentic geology or geography books, but slightly cleaner and more right-angled serifs to produce a more modern look.
Text
For the text content, I wrote a description of the place, and followed up with my own recommendations of what to do there that were a little bit wacky (for example drink from a water fountain that tastes like green apples) in order to balance the ancient pristine beauty of the rock with a fun adventure.
Icons
The icons include which state the location is in and the main type of shape featured at the location (e.g. mitten for Monument Valley). If the location was on the border between states (these rocks were in formation long before US state borders were drawn, which is why a lot of these locations are situated across state borders), I made a hybrid icon between the two states, with an “X” in between. I removed the AZ’s and the UT’s from the title because having the state initials and the symbol felt redundant, and the specific state that the rocks were in didn’t really matter too much anyway.
Front/Back Covers
I kept the covers relatively simple, to make it more of a surprise of the beautiful places inside. I offered a little peek at the content by fitting some photos into the letters A and Z: A for the front (the beginning), and Omega for the back (the end).
I wanted to break down the basic types of rocks in the book and show the reader that there can even be this many shapes of rocks, so I wanted the title to convey a sense of “introduction” to this subject. I also made it A to Z to show that I really did try to encompass all the different types of rock formations in the book. The front is Delicate Arch in Utah because it happens to be shaped sort of like an A, and the back is Horseshoe Bend in Arizona which is shaped like an upside-down Omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet. I chose serif font to match the old with the new feeling: the rocks are old but I wanted my perspective of them to be new.
Unfortunately because I saved my work on Google Drive I only have the final iteration and not the intermediate steps since the crit.
Final
With those changes in mind here is my final printed book:
For this project I really had to let go of my apprehensions in straying from a very conventional format and allow myself to play with where to arrange content. It was scary at first because there was a lot of blank space on the page that I had to fill in, and I tried to fill it in too much. I learned about the balance of white space, choice in which pictures to blow up and which to keep a little smaller and navigate having full freedom to design a book.
