CDF Project 5

Overview

For our final project, we were tasked with the creation of a short book, with content, dimensions, and binding style entirely of our choosing. In doing so, the aim was to apply what we’d learned throughout the semester about grids, color, typography, and other concepts. In addition, we learned the basics of and used InDesign to put together and print our books.

Topic Ideas

I had a few different ideas for my book when first brainstorming, including:

• Travel diary
• Iceland trip
• Podcast episode
• Building interiors

I really wanted to find a way to use my photos from traveling, so I decided to do a sort of travel diary book, showcasing the photos I’d taken in various cities.

Design References

While thinking about the topic for my book, I researched and drew inspiration from some other books I found on the internet, which I collected on a Pinterest board. I specifically looked for books with a lot of photography involved, and was drawn to a lot of the very simplistic books with focus on the images, instead of text. In particular, I really liked the look and feel of “Cereal” magazine, which showcases a lot of fantastic photography of cities around the world in a really beautiful and clean way. In many books, I noticed how the consistency of a color scheme across spreads, as well as the similarity of photography styles/image editing really tied books together.

Pinterest board here.

Some favorites:

Sketches and Concept

To begin, I started with a few simple sketches of some various spreads I wanted to try out. My initial idea was to have chapters for different cities, where each chapter would start with a title page, and be followed by a few pages of photos I’d taken. In addition, I sketched out a basic table of contents spread for the chapters, as well as an introduction spread that would introduce the contents of the book at the very beginning. Since I wanted the book to be square, to match with the size of many of the photos I wanted to use, one of my teachers, Suzanne, suggested that I go with a 3x3 grid, shown below to the right. I used this grid and my initial sketches to begin creating drafts in InDesign.

Digital Iterations

When I first started doing the digital iterations for my book, I found it most challenging to organize all of my photos, and decide how to place them on each page. I initially just created spreads for Japan, before moving on to Iceland. I tried out a bunch of different layouts and placements, and gravitated towards pages with less images on them. While doing so, I also tried to position the photos in a way that matched their nature, for example, giving the most impressive Icelandic photos an entire spread, and grouping together photos with similar content but with varying perspectives. Below are a few spreads from my first digital iterations.

I experimented with spreads such as the ones shown below, where I took a photo and tried to give it a mirroring representative illustration. I tried a few various ways of doing this, with different shapes and line weights, but ultimately felt that it didn’t match the style of the rest of my book, and decided to take it out.

After creating my first draft, I felt like the pages weren’t connected together well visually, and that the photos seemed a bit randomly placed. I wanted each chapter to have a sort of logical flow, guiding the reader through the pictures without explicitly pointing things out. To do so, I considered separating chapters with various keywords/themes (like the screenshot shown below), that would tie together a few photos and give some explanation about why they were chosen. But, after trying this out, I decided that I didn’t want to limit my photos to fit only certain categories, and would instead try to present my photos in a way that would implicitly demonstrate certain themes of each place. In addition, I was also unsure about whether or not I wanted to use more text in the book to describe the photographs or give more context.

The main feedback I got from my peers was to make the text larger and more consistent, add more color to the pages/text, and work more on the pages with illustration on them. My professor MacKenzie also encouraged me to use my grid structure more, and find a way to make my photos to tell a stronger visual story. One way we tried to do this, was to layout all of my spreads side by side, and identify a few layouts that I wanted to stick with and could apply to the rest of my pages. This helped me tie together the two books, and also create a more consistent feel across the spreads.

Although I started out designing spreads for one book with different chapters for different places, MacKenzie suggested that it might be better to make separate books for each place, such that I would be able to easily add to the collection after visiting new places, and also since I had quite a few pages.

Final Book

For my final books, I tightened up the layouts to be more consistent within and across the books, and also tried to organize the photos in a way that showed a sort of progression. For Japan, that progression moved from photos of traditional places, objects, etc. to modern environments and the culture of the city. For Iceland, it involved the contrast between the seemingly untouched, towering works of nature, with the small people living in and experiencing those places. I also decided to take out all text beside the introduction page, and a short poem, for each book, as I wanted the focus to be on the photos, and what they contained. Lastly, I printed the pages out on 24lb white tabloid paper, cut the edges off with an exacto knife, and bound them all together using a saddle stitch with white thread.

Reflections

I was pretty content with the final product, and overall I liked how the images looked when flipping through the book. A few things I would improve:

• Using a different paper for the covers that is thicker and/or colored. I think this would give the books a more sturdy and polished feel.
• Adding some more context to the photos by adding small, inconspicuous labels or tags.
• Using some element to tie the pages together in each book.