Project 5: Book Design
Process Documentation
About
For this project we were to fully design an entire book of our choice. For topic choices of the book I wanted to incorporate something related to my major into the content of the book and since I am a graduating senior this year, I thought it would be relevant to make a book about a few works that I had done whilst at CMU.
Inspirations & Design Ideas
Although I had made portfolios before, I had never made one in book form. So I decided to look on Pinterest for book design/portfolio inspirations. I geared towards minimal designs that seems to emphasize the shape of the image, many of the images within the design had elements of cropping and was often juxtaposed with blocks of color or text. I also enjoyed the randomness of placement that a lot of these designs featured. Another feature that was appealing to me was the overlapping of images; e.g having a black and white image as background, and placing the main image in color on top. Another element I wanted to include in my design was having the text go in various directions, such as the first and second image below.
Project Progress
Whilst I was transferring my sketches into Indesign I realized that the design inspirations I was aiming for, wasn’t practical for displaying works of art. Most of the designs were for fashion, and when placing an image of an artwork over a busy background it felt distracting to the art. So I decided to move away from the idea of “image over background” and opted for a white background. However, I still wanted to incorporate elements of randomness (utilizing grid) into the design.
Since my book -content wise- was not complicated, I really wanted to create interesting or clean labels for the artwork titles. For my initial design I thought of using a table for the image description. However after our class interim critique, the general feedback was confusion about the table. So I decided to remove the table and wrap the artwork details around the image. For me, the wrapping of text around images was one of the most hardest aspects of this project. This was mainly because I had to decide not only which side to place the text but also the distance from which the text falls from the border.
I also liked the idea of using handwritten text for some artwork labels. I opted for text written in all caps with permanent marker. I decided to use this type of label evenly throughout the book.
Final Iteration
Conclusion
I think this was a fitting final project because it incorporated many techniques that we had accumulated so far in this class. The project required me to thoughtfully consider elements such as grid-use, typography, color and much more. The Indesign program was also new to me and I think it will become a valuable program for me for future uses. The saddle stitch binding was also something I had never done before.
Overall I am satisfied with the final outcome, however I do wish that I had taken image resolution into careful consideration a bit more. A few of the images printed with pixelation, which could have been avoided with better image quality.
