Project 5

When initially assigned this project, I was overwhelmed with different ideas with different purposes and had a lot of trouble narrowing it down to one. My first idea was to do an interior design book, in which I would use every page to describe a popular design style for homes, and pair that with major colors and some items that correspond with that design. The purpose was just to pursue my interest for interior design, which I actually discovered while helping my parents find, remodel, and decorate a house two years ago. The second idea was to depict different cities around the world with color. For example, a section on New York would be black and white, with the color yellow accented because of the iconic yellow cabs in the city. The purpose was simply just to be able to use color to show the sometimes unnoticed beauty of some cities. The third idea I had was to compile pictures from all of my travels, since I travel a lot with my family, which is important to me because I prize my opportunities to explore different cultures and ways of life.

After a lot of consideration, I decided on the last idea, to do a travel book documenting my travels. Traveling is something that I cherish a lot but I personally haven’t documented any of it in my own way, which is something I have always wanted to do. Simply because of convenience, I decided to go backwards in time and start from my most recent travels.

Overall, I wanted to use simple designs and a variety of colors, to keep the flow and progression of the book interesting. For the title of the book, I went with “Wanderlust” because I saw it come up in the past in random advertisements or Instagram travel channels, and I really liked the meaning of it, which is “a strong desire or urge to travel and explore the world.” I decided to explain that concept, as well as the purpose of the book itself, before going into every individual trip I’ve gone on. Although the ideas for the first two spreads were pretty developed for the interim critique, I was still confused as to how to portray the pictures of the trips themselves without making the rest of the book look like a photo album. One thing I definitely wanted to do is have a full spread with one image from the country and then the next spread would be a collection of images. That being said, I decided to use the interim critique to see people’s suggestions regarding that concern. Below is my design that I had for the interim critique.

In summary, the main critiques for my interim critique were:

1. Don’t image trace the initial picture, since it doesn’t flow with the rest of the book.
2. Choose a different font.
3. Don’t use drop shadows on the photos — it’s distracting.
4. Fix the pixelated images on the second and third pages.
5. Add text to the spreads with multiple images to make it look less like a photo album.

I really appreciated these critiques and implemented all of them, and as a result I was really satisfied with the way my book turned out. It was more like a journal of all of my travels, while still highlighting the beauty and uniqueness of every place I went to. I really liked that I was able to use photos that I had taken myself as well!

Below are images of my final book!