Project 5: Book
Project Overview
For our last project in Communication Design Fundamentals, we were tasked with choosing any piece of work (art, a story, poetry, a how-to manual, etc.) and hand-bind a book. This project was meant to incorporate every skill we’ve learned this summer such as hierarchy, color, etc. (with specific emphasis on grids and typography) to create a cohesive and creative piece.
I exclusively used InDesign for this project.
Brainstorming
There were no limitations on what topics we might explore with our book. I came up with many ideas on what to make my book about, mainly centered around Pittsburgh — running trails in Pittsburgh, possible date nights in the city, or cafes I’ve visited in the area. However, I realized it would be difficult to get photos with consistent lighting and of high quality, so these ideas were abandoned.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s use of color has always impressed and inspired me, so I decided to use this project as an opportunity to further explore her work and highlight what I love about her style. Ultimately, I decided that my book would feature Georgia O’Keeffe’s work, arranged by color.
Concept
I wanted to mix the feel of a traditional art book with contemporary color callouts in order to showcase Georgia’s work and skill while highlighting her use of color. Many of O’Keeffe’s most iconic paintings are powerful landscapes, so I wanted to ensure their full detail was captured and decided on a landscape orientation for my book, with minimal text so all the focus is on the art.
I compiled dozens of images of O’Keeffe’s work and arranged them by color to be able to easily apply them to the spreads I imagined.
Because of the nature of the work being featured, rather than sketch out my spreads, I made them all online. The different grids I experimented with can be seen at each checkpoint.
Side note: Before including them in my book, I Google Image-searched each painting to validate its authenticity, since I found many variations in color or misattributed paintings. If the images were not authentic, I either found the non-color corrected version of the painting or replaced it altogether with another piece of work featuring the same color. As a result, the final collection of photos featured in my book is different from the initial collection I compiled.
First Individual Critique
In my first critique with Mackenzie, I wanted to go over my spread flow. In designing my grid, I wanted to make sure that there was a path of negative space between paintings across the spread that the eye could follow. This would also ensure that paintings wouldn’t feel too cluttered across a page. This path could be broken if there was a painting I really wanted to bring attention to. At this point in the process, I had not yet decided on font, and not all paintings had been attributed yet.
It seemed like my “path” was working, but Mackenzie pointed out that that more stable placement of my painting titles and color callouts would make my spreads feel more cohesive, and eliminate any “searching” a viewer might have to do to find what they’re looking for.
Through this feedback, I decided to place both the color callouts and the painting names + years on the top right corner.
First Class Critique
The four spreads I presented for critique can be seen above. My last spread was an “experiment”, since in this spread I broke up a painting into two in an attempt to bring focus into two separate details.
Questions I Posed During Critique:
- Are the color callouts effective?
- Is spacing between paintings okay?
- Does my last spread’s painting “experiment” work?
Prominent Feedback:
- There was a divide in whether the color callouts were effective. Some liked them, while others thought it distracted from the art. Both these points were valid, but I was resolute in keeping them in my book.
- Painting names should be placed directly under the art, like traditional books and museums do, since it reduces the work a viewer might need to do if they really like a piece and want to learn more about it. I followed this advice for the duration of this project.
- The paintings immediately to the right of my Color Title pages were perceived as too cluttered, so for the rest of this project, I limited the number of paintings featured next to the Color Title to one.
- By positioning some of my paintings over the fold of the book, some information would be lost about the paintings. I decided to avoid placing paintings across pages in order to ensure that the viewer wouldn’t miss out on any details in O’Keeffe’s work.
- No one really understood what my experiment was, so I decided to abandon it since it wasn’t immediately clear that the two parts were from one painting.
Last Individual Critique
The most significant changes between these spreads and those from the class critique are the format of the color callouts and color title pages.
Color Callouts
I realized that adding the hex code to each color callout would make each spread more interactive. I loved the idea of someone making art inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s work, and wanted to facilitate that process as much as possible. Additionally, this overall made the callouts more purposeful, distinguished the book to make it more contemporary, and delivered the callouts in the extremely familiar “color swatch” format.
The font chosen for the callouts was inspired by Coolor’s color scheme generator.
Color Title Page
In order to make the color page more dynamic, I thought it would be great to bring in the actual color it was presenting into the text. I ultimately decided to use a close-up detail shot of the painting next to the title page to fill in the title shape.
Feedback
It was commented that the font used should be thicker in order to include as much of the painting as possible, as well as that my hex code callout should be a smaller type size. The most important piece of feedback I received was on painting title spacing. Up to this point, I had been putting painting titles in the gutters of my grid. I was quickly shown that this was incorrect, and that there were places in my spreads where my title was too close to the painting. From this point on in the project, I stopped putting text into gutters (as I should have been doing all along), and made sure that my text box height was consistent among all text boxes.
Final Piece
After making the small adjustments recommended in the last individual critique session, I had to make the front and back cover, as well as informational pages about Georgia O’Keeffe, sources, and thanks. My iterative process focused on the front and back covers.
Covers
I knew I wanted to keep with the theme of a color swatch, and through Mackenzie’s recommendation, incorporated detail shots of paintings for the colors in the cover swatch. This provided a great texture, and was subtle enough that was described as a pleasant surprise in our final critiques.
I struggled with title placement and color, but opted for an outline rather than filled in title to not distract from the swatches around, as well as to invite viewers to fill in the title for themselves, through their imagination or physically (and maybe even using the hex codes provided in the book!)
I decided that the back cover should reflect the front cover, but without the title.
Initially, I centered the text of the title, but eventually decided to make the text smaller and to the side so that the page would be filled with color.
Overall, the reception on my book was positive! I’m very proud of all I accomplished in this project. If I had to do it again, I would make the book longer, just to showcase more of Georgia O’Keeffe’s amazing work!
My full book can be scrolled through below:
I learned so much in this course, and couldn’t thank Mackenzie or Suzanne enough for their support throughout this semester!
